Chapter 7
Chapter 7
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 7
Chapter Title: Death Line
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Chest hot, head cold.
These days, it wasn't just something you'd find in martial arts manuals—it was a staple line in street-side storybooks too.
As famous as it was, it carried real weight.
Those who couldn't heat their hearts with boiling blood couldn't kill their foes.
Those who couldn't cool their heads with clear judgment would be killed by them.
What decided victory or defeat in battle wasn't the blood surging to the upper dantian, but precise insight and judgment.
Hyeonseong took in the enemy and its surroundings with his widely expanded field of vision.
'I'm at a disadvantage in reach. Their stride is longer too. But that blade seems attached right at the wrist joint, so switching to thrusting should be easier for me. Can I use the trees in the forest to block their slashing path?'
In that split-second interval, countless questions and answers flashed through Hyeonseong's mind.
Distance, reach, terrain, environment, weapons, builds. Every possible variable meshed together in his brain like interlocking gears.
'A Half Moon-grade monster means their physical abilities are clearly superior. No head-on clashes—create variables with strategy.'
Finishing his calculations, Hyeonseong drew up his inner energy.
He lightly shook the blade wrapped in ashen sword qi, taunting it. The yokai roared once more.
Kwaaang! Its reverse-jointed legs, bent to their limit, sprang open with explosive force. The power shoving against the earth propelled the yokai's form like a cannonball.
Mid-flight, the yokai's arm spun in a wide arc through the air.
Speed was power. No defense could hold against a blade-tipped projectile. Even if Hyeonseong blocked with his sword, it aimed to cleave through his guard in one go.
Hyeonseong bent his knees. Lowering his center of gravity, he tilted the sword he'd raised overhead at an angle.
'Now.'
Kwagagagak! In the next instant, Hyeonseong and the yokai swapped positions.
Blood coated the tip of Hyeonseong's mid-stance sword. The yokai, slammed into an open patch a dozen zhang away and rolling once, let out a scream-like screech.
[___——_-!!!]
A straight gash across its smooth grayish-white skin was drenched in blood. Rage—true rage—colored the yokai's roar.
Glancing back as he turned his head, Hyeonseong revised his assessment of the yokai.
'Sword qi only tore the skin. Muscles tough as iron chains. And... it counterattacked mid-slash. Faster than expected. Smart too.'
A deep gouge marred Hyeonseong's shoulder.
The moment he'd deflected the yokai's slash with his sword flat and sliced open its belly with the edge, the yokai had raked his shoulder with the small arm on its side.
It hadn't hit major blood vessels or strained his muscles badly, but in a fight with a superior foe, every loss could lead straight to death.
A little deeper, and he'd have lost the use of that arm for this battle.
The instant one arm went out, the delicate balance between the yokai's superior physique and Hyeonseong's once-peerless technique would shatter.
He couldn't circulate energy and heal mid-fight like in his past life either. That would spell his second death.
Tsk. Clicking his tongue, Hyeonseong pressed an acupoint near his shoulder with his fingers. The bleeding stopped at once. His white robe, soaked red, ceased spreading its stain.
In the end, this was a battle of endurance. Hyeonseong trusted his master, as he'd said.
Master would return, and the yokai would die. All he had to do was drag this out into a prolonged fight.
Spinning his arm to check it was fine, Hyeonseong spoke.
"Got a name?"
[_——_-?]
The yokai, its elongated tongue lapping at the wound on its belly through its splayed lower jaw, tilted its head.
Among the Full Moon-grade yokai Hyeonseong had faced, some possessed intelligence beyond humans, shapeshifting into human forms or even speaking their language.
With that bizarre mouth, mimicking human speech seemed impossible. But as a Half Moon-grade—just one step below—it clearly grasped the intent behind Hyeonseong's words.
"A name, I mean. What you call someone... Though you probably don't have one. Everything with a name crawled out of that damned full moon."
A few names still haunted him: Ghost Mountain, Island Bird, Sea Wolf, Heavenly Mirror, Night Fox, Demon Buddha... Some had been enemies, others once allies.
Most enemies, though. And all far stronger than this yokai.
[-___-_-__-!!!]
Sensing some slight in Hyeonseong's tone, the yokai ripped its jaws wide and unleashed a thunderous bellow unlike before.
"What a temperamental bastard."
Hyeonseong rubbed his ear irritably.
Blood smeared his fingers. His eardrums, pushed too far, had finally burst.
In that moment, the yokai shifted stance. It raised its bladed arm high to the sky while its side arms braced the ground like a quadrupedal beast. Muscles writhed visibly in its deeply bent legs.
A leopard crouching in the brush before a deer.
The prelude to a charge. It wasn't hiding it either—that spoke to its fury and confidence.
The yokai had learned from the fight. Hyeonseong's sword strike had forced bleeding and pain, but no fatal wound. That bred its boldness.
Facing the yokai's charge stance, Hyeonseong gripped his sword one-handed like a salute, supporting the hilt's end with his other palm.
And then.
The yokai and the demon rushed to kill each other.
The crescent blade swung wide met the Pine Pattern Ancient Sword's body. Matching blade to blade would lose to raw power. He had to rely on a lifetime of technique and martial learning.
Hyeonseong's wrist, gripping the hilt, spun in a circle. The sword tip traced a small arc, flicking the yokai's blade downward.
The subtle art of the soft conquering the hard, deflecting the foe's assault with ease. He'd woven the Wudang Sect's secret hand techniques into his swordplay in that instant.
[_——-_?!]
The yokai bellowed in confusion at its own arm, trajectory warped and slammed into the dirt. If it had eyes on its face, they'd have bulged like fists.
Hyeonseong didn't let his guard down. Just one exchange.
His eyes were already on the next. A heartbeat later—the future unfolded in his mind like an illusion.
The opposite blade dove vertically. Dodge clumsily, and the flicked blade would swing back. Dive in, and those side arms would gut him with sharp claws.
Hyeonseong recalled the art of war from Sun Tzu's strategies.
The first strike secures victory. The best defense had always been offense.
Two streams of inner energy twisted like threads in his gripping acupoints.
Extremely precise Entangling Thread Energy spun the Pine Pattern Ancient Sword half a turn in midair.
Reclaiming the momentarily released sword took only an instant.
His foot, infused with the Thousand Catty Drop's subtlety, pinned the deflected blade heavily to the ground as he slashed upward in a diagonal arc with his reverse grip.
[—_—_!]
—Death. A chilling instinct woke the yokai's survival drive.
It wrenched its pinned blade free from under Hyeonseong's foot and leaped back. Hyeonseong's pursuing sword whipped like the wind.
The yokai backpedaled on its legs but kept its arms swinging.
Grayish-silver and silver blades tangled in a frenzy.
Fierce offense and defense upheaved the earth and splintered trees. Every clash of blades unleashed shockwaves that snapped branches raining down, kicking up dust in cycles of rise and fall.
It ravaged one corner of the mountain mercilessly—not a fight anymore, but a storm of turbulence.
The sensation of dancing on the death line revived memories of strife. Riding the waves of time, Hyeonseong's sword poured down even fiercer.
Advanced sword techniques of slashing, thrusting, stabbing, pushing, and deflecting, paired with ashen sword qi detaching from the blade to fly in trajectories beyond the yokai's perception, shredding flesh.
[_——___-!]
The yokai screamed in agony. Hyeonseong saw his opening there.
'The Wudang sword flows like water. The vessel shapes the ever-changing form.'
Circulating his inner energy per the incantation for the Wudang Sect's famed Great Purity Astral Energy, the Pine Pattern Ancient Sword blazed with light far beyond before.
Stellar radiance from the blade. Sword gang.
The moment he raised the sword gang overhead to cleave down.
"Kuh."
Hyeonseong's vision blurred.
He urgently fell back with footwork, retreating a dozen zhang.
'This...'
Hyeonseong steadied his staggering body.
A peak expert's reactions in battle bordered on precognition. Thanks to opening the upper dantian via the Ren and Du meridians and Life-Death Portals.
A realm his past life's Hyeonseong had attained long ago, but this one's Hyeonseong hadn't yet reached.
Instead.
Hyeonseong compiled experience from countless fights, reviewing and mapping every possibility.
Like a go player seeing moves ahead before placing a stone—he foresaw breaths into the future.
After the first exchange, the yokai's every move fell within his predictions.
This transcendent foresight consumed more mental energy than upper dantian precognition.
Twin streams of blood trickled from Hyeonseong's nose.
Wiping it with his robe sleeve, his hand trembled.
Overloaded mind, acupoints and muscles at their limit spasming.
Half an incense stick's time.
Hyeonseong knew his body couldn't last longer.
Would Master arrive before the limit? Or the limit before Master?
Hyeonseong stood at the crossroads of life and death deciding his fate.
"Nothing to it."
To him, it was bitterly familiar.