The Life-Taking Ghost Sword
A middle-aged man with close-cropped hair and a savage cast to his features.
He wore a tattered black martial uniform, as if trying to hide his identity. Yet the wild killing intent that clung to him only magnified his presence—no, made it cut deeper, more visceral, impossible to ignore.
The deputy leader’s urgent sound transmission cut through the din, replacing the squad leader who now lay split in half and sunk into the filth.
“Stick close! Stick even tighter, I said!”
“Do not give him a single opening to wield his flying swords!”
Tamrang’s hunting dogs hurled themselves at Tal-myeong-gwi-geom as if they meant to tear him apart with their teeth.
“Understood!”
In the brief span it took them to charge at full force, Tal-myeong-gwi-geom’s swords flashed.
Puhwak!
An arm holding a blade seemed to fly free—then a leg was severed, a head toppled. The dog that had been charging beside him never even had time to register his comrade’s body splitting open. One of Tal-myeong-gwi-geom’s other blades had already swept past; the attacker’s own fingers floated free in the air.
“……!”
Before a groan could escape his throat, before blood could even spurt from the stumps, the sword that had stolen his fingers slithered up his arm like a snake. It rotated with the smooth ease of a fruit knife, spiraling up the limb and carving it open in a clean helix. The image burned itself into the hunting dog’s retina.
Then the same blade drove gently, almost delicately, into his eyeball.
Before the edge even touched flesh, the murderous sharpness of its aura sliced the cornea, split the pupil, halved the vitreous, and punched through the retina.
Puh-eok!
With a sound like a bursting watermelon, the sword erupted from the back of his skull. Even as the corpse with a neat hole through its head collapsed into the sewage, the rest of the pack never slowed.
“Bite him!”
They charged on. It was a headlong rush toward death, yet not one of them hesitated by so much as a hair’s breadth. They were loyal to their master and obeyed the pack leader’s orders without question. That was why they were Tamrang’s hunting dogs.
“Do not spare your bodies! Charge! Even with your last breath, sink your teeth into him!”
Through the wall of sword-light woven by four blades, the surviving dogs finally closed the distance and latched onto Tal-myeong-gwi-geom.
What greeted them was the final sword he held in his own hand.
“Welcome. Now…”
One Soul Usurps Life
“Die.”
Gripping the sword in both hands, Tal-myeong-gwi-geom moved with explosive force, carving every direction to pieces in a single breath. It was a motion that shredded the surrounding space itself—stripped of the elegance and restraint he had shown with his flying blades. This was ferocious swordsmanship that fully lived up to the name Asura.
“Kh, huk—?!”
“Gahk—!”
Those who had closed in lost arms, had torsos split, had legs torn free, and went flying in every direction. Even so, their blades left large and small wounds across Tal-myeong-gwi-geom’s body.
“Keep pressing him!”
Before the first wave had even ended, the next dogs charged through the spray of their comrades’ blood. While Tal-myeong-gwi-geom vertically split the back of one who had already rushed him, they shredded his own back into rags. Blood sprayed from the rents in his black uniform.
Yet the attackers felt it instinctively.
Not a single fatal wound…!
Their certainty crystallized the moment they saw the smile on the lips of the man whose back was turned to them—a smile that said he could barely contain his delight.
“Heh heh heh….”
Madman—!
Tal-myeong-gwi-geom was exactly the man of his infamous reputation and the rumors that surrounded him. He was savoring this very moment of killing while taking wounds himself.
“Die.”
Burst Slaughter
The swords that returned from behind the hunting dogs and the one he held himself became a storm, weaving a single catastrophe. Once more, shredded pieces of bodies erupted in heaps into the air.
“Heh heh.”
In the process Tal-myeong-gwi-geom took still more wounds, yet the laughter that spilled from his lips without even a pause for breath made every hair on every body stand on end.
Madness. What other word could describe that sight?
“Heh-hahahaha!”
That man—!
The face of the chivalrous warrior who still could not even think of rising had gone deathly pale. Even if the days when that murderous renown had shaken the world were long past, the near-ghost stories he had just heard rose before him as vividly as if they were happening now.
Blood-God Evil Ghost. Five-Sword Madman.
In the days of the Luoyang Sword Family’s Great Southern Expedition, when the Grand Elder himself had led the campaign, this man had stood at the very front of every major battle—the most representative vanguard warrior of the Sword Family. He had slaughtered the elite of the Namgung Clan who refused to open the road south, choked the Yangtze with the corpses of unorthodox martial artists, and dyed the southern coast red with the blood of pirate mercenaries. He was the most ferocious blade the Sword Family had ever produced.
No one who had eaten even a few meals from the martial world could look at the scene before him and fail to recall those four characters of a sobriquet.
Tal-myeong-gwi-geom…!
The nightmare of the south was being reenacted here and now.
The sword in Tal-myeong-gwi-geom’s right hand—Form—flashed as if swatting a dog aside.
Kwang!
Struck by a heavy blade that shattered a wall of air, the man burst apart on the spot. The sword that had already returned to his left hand—Feeling—flashed next, carving the torso of the one who had stabbed his side into five separate pieces.
Puhwahak!
Heavy Sword Art: Right Rakshasa.
Swift Sword Art: Left Asura.
Blocking the hunting dogs that charged from every direction—front, rear, left, right—were the remaining three swords: Perception, Formation, and Consciousness. Those three blades embroidered the air with blood and flesh as if they were living things, each realizing an entirely different principle and essence of swordsmanship, as though held by three separate masters.
Those who charged were dismantled as they charged; those who retreated were dismantled as they retreated; those who tried to flank were dismantled as they flanked—regardless of distance. Limbs simply came apart and sank into the filth.
This was the unique sword art of Tal-myeong-gwi-geom, his signature ultimate technique, unfolding through five blades of utterly different natures—Form, Feeling, Perception, Formation, and Consciousness:
Ultimate Stance — Harmony of the Five Aggregates
With every breath they exhaled, every blink of an eye, the hunting dogs’ lives dwindled at a terrifying rate.
“I’m joining in!”
The deputy leader’s sound transmission tore out like a scream as he gripped his weapon.
“All at once! Somehow create an openi—!”
The order never finished.
“……!”
Tal-myeong-gwi-geom’s steel-hard hand was already clamped around the deputy leader’s face.
“You.”
Locked eyes with the man through that iron grip, the deputy froze solid.
“You’ve been chattering nonstop since earlier. Annoying.”
“Ghk…!”
Both of the deputy’s hands moved on pure reflex, stabbing between Tal-myeong-gwi-geom’s ribs—but before the blades could even dig deep, four returning swords reduced his body to scattered fragments.
“Nice try.”
Tal-myeong-gwi-geom clenched his fist and crushed the head that remained in his palm.
When he turned and met the eyes of the chivalrous warrior who still lay sprawled, face ashen, the last five hunting dogs were simultaneously impaled by the five swords and pinned to the ceiling of the great waterway.
Kwajijik.
From the corpses dangling in midair, streams of blood trickled down. Passing beneath that curtain of falling blood, Tal-myeong-gwi-geom approached the warrior.
“What? Why are you still lying there like that?”
As he walked past the hanging bodies, the swords pinning them withdrew.
Chachachachachang—!
Not a single drop of blood left on the blades, the five swords returned to their scabbards with a flash, as if slamming home into their sheaths.
“Here.”
Tal-myeong-gwi-geom extended a hand to the still-prone warrior. The man could not find the courage to take it.
“I-I’m fine!”
He scrambled to his feet. Tal-myeong-gwi-geom gave a short snort of laughter.
Eyes trembling with terror, a stance already half-ready to flee, every last hair standing on end—reactions that had once been so familiar now felt strangely fresh, making him keenly aware of the years that had slipped by.
Suddenly he remembered something the First Young Master, Yeon So-hyeon, had said to him long ago when he still carried a practice sword at his waist.
“When your sword has grown so old that it can no longer be drawn for anything… that time will come.”
Tal-myeong-gwi-geom spoke.
“At this level, it’s not so rusted and worn that you’d call it old, is it?”
The warrior had no idea what he meant.
“Of course not!”
But nodding was the only choice left to him. What other answer could one give the man who had just carved an entire Tamrang squad to pieces in the blink of an eye?
“Hey…!”
“You’re still alive…?”
From the far end of the long waterway, the thin voices of his fellow chivalrous warriors drifted closer. At the familiar voices and faces, the tension drained from the warrior’s shoulders.
“Over here! Here!”
He waved and shouted. A cheerful clamor answered.
“I knew you were still kicking!”
“Stubborn life like a cockroach, that one!”
As they came running, a smile finally touched the warrior’s face.
The curtain was falling on the great escape.
At the mouth of the great waterway, foul sewage poured out and mixed with the Yellow River. That same stinking, nauseating filth, once swept into the rough and majestic current, vanished without a trace.
All the blood that had fallen into the sewage. The scraps of flesh, the entrails, the fragments of limbs. The Yellow River swallowed everything without a care and simply continued to flow.
Watching that vast river surge past made every joy and sorrow of the secular world feel suddenly meaningless. The rotten vested interests. The twisted structures of power. The desperate daily resistance. All of it seemed far away.
“…….”
While the warrior with the hand-axe stared blankly at the sight, a comrade smacked him hard across the back.
“Ack!”
A sharp jolt of pain shot from his back to the top of his skull. Before it had even faded, the others swarmed him and wrapped him in rough embraces.
“We’re all alive! Every last one of us made it out of Luoyang!”
“You did well, you bastard!”
Hands ruffled and thumped his head.
“It’s all because you covered the rear!”
The warrior with the hand-axe laughed without meaning to.
“Hahahaha!”
Yes. A man could not become the Yellow River. As long as this pain remained, he knew he was a living being. And a living being had no choice but to rejoice, to grieve, to feel rage, and to savor joy.
Perhaps that was why even Tal-myeong-gwi-geom deliberately took wounds while he fought.
After a long, noisy celebration of their escape, they peeled away from him one by one. They had already scraped up strength they never knew they had during the flight.
“Come to think of it…”
“Hm?”
A comrade asked the hand-axe warrior.
“Where did Hero Tal-myeong-gwi-geom go?”
Others chimed in at once.
“You were the last one with him—why didn’t he come out with us?”
“We ought to thank him properly…”
“To think the First Young Master—no, Big Brother—has a man like that under his command.”
“Where is he now?”
The hand-axe warrior looked awkward as he answered.
“Hero Tal-myeong-gwi-geom went back into the Underground Great Waterway.”
“……?”
Puzzled faces all around.
“Huh? Why in the world…?”
“We all got out already, didn’t we?”
The hand-axe warrior spoke with a complicated expression.
“He said…”
Moments earlier.
“H-Hero! Where are you going right now?!”
“Hm?”
At the hand-axe warrior’s shout, Tal-myeong-gwi-geom stopped and looked back.
“Can’t you tell by looking?”
“You’re going back into that hell of a waterway?!”
A smile curved Tal-myeong-gwi-geom’s lips.
“Of course.”
“But why…?!”
He turned and walked deeper into the Underground Great Waterway.
“Going back through the waterway is faster.”
The warrior hurriedly pulled out the map the First Young Master had given him.
“At least take this—!”
“No need.”
Amid the sound of flowing sewage, his low voice somehow rang with perfect clarity.
“If I meet a ghost, I cut the ghost. If I meet a Buddha, I cut the Buddha.”
Kill the Buddha, kill the patriarch, kill the father, kill the mother.
That was the path of Tal-myeong-gwi-geom.