Signature Technique: Heavenly Seamless Robe
Cheonui Mubong was polishing a sword.
"...Are you listening?"
Cheonui Mubong, Yeon Seo-rin.
Yeon So-hyeon's second older sister gave a rough nod.
"Yes, yes."
At that halfhearted reply, the Guard Pavilion Master—who had once been her teacher—bit down hard on his lip.
In the old days he would have thundered a rebuke right then and there. Now it was out of the question. He was the one who needed her.
"So..."
He had only just heard the news that Yeon So-hyeon was shaking the Elder Council Hall to its foundations with successive re-votes.
"This aunt of yours wants to look once more, seriously, with you, Seo-rin, toward the highest place in this Sword House. That is what I am saying."
For the benefit of Yeon Seo-rin, who was clearly not listening, he laid the words out again with deliberate gravity.
"You and I can do it."
"Everything that happened before—this aunt will apologize for all of it. For deceiving you about your father. For binding you with that matter and trying to handle you as I pleased."
The Grand Head of the Sword House, her own younger brother—and the wall she had never once managed to surmount. To climb over that wall, swallowing her pride was a price she was more than willing to pay.
"Seo-rin, so..."
Yet the former disciple she had finally steeled herself to meet after so long paid her no real attention. Humming a street tune she must have picked up somewhere, she continued polishing her father's sword.
Whatever had happened during those months of solitary training, her hair was a wild mess and her martial robes were old, filthy rags. Even if someone had called Yeon Seo-rin a wild savage, it would not have seemed strange.
And yet, for some reason, the figure reflected in the Guard Pavilion Master's eyes looked utterly free.
Perhaps that was why the carefully prepared persuasion he had brought for Cheonui Mubong Yeon Seo-rin, newly returned to the main house after so long, slipped away unbidden.
"...How did you become free so easily?"
Yeon Seo-rin's humming stopped.
"All my life," she said, lifting her father's sword to examine the finished edge, "there was a sword I wanted to chase."
Gazing at the antique blade heavy with age, the Guard Pavilion Master nodded as if he understood.
"Your father's sword, you mean? That goes for me as well. That sword is, to every martial artist—"
"No."
Yeon Seo-rin lightly rejected the assumption.
"The sword I chased was not Father's."
The unexpected words left the Guard Pavilion Master flustered.
"The first time I saw that sword," she continued evenly, beginning a story she had never told another living soul, "was when I was still a child."
"The day So-hyeon first took up a sword. I was there."
"Yeon So-hyeon...?"
At a secret history he was hearing for the first time, the Guard Pavilion Master's eyelids trembled.
"That boy held a sword?"
A few months earlier, after ending his seclusion, the martial skill Yeon So-hyeon had first revealed publicly in the Valley of Sin had gone a long way toward erasing the humiliating title of "Swordless One" that had dogged him for so many years. Yet even after that day, Yeon So-hyeon had never once taken a sword in hand again.
"How could anyone call that the sword force of a child holding a blade for the first time?"
In a calm voice Yeon Seo-rin drew out the image burned more vividly into her memory than any other.
"How could anyone call that the killing aura of a child who had never once wounded another human being?"
"That," she declared without hesitation, "was the bearing of one who had already founded a house with the sword—the bearing of a true Sword Master."
"That child, So-hyeon, was from the very beginning a completed warrior, a perfect martial artist."
Had the story come from anyone else's lips, the Guard Pavilion Master would have snorted in disbelief.
"Right after that, Father discovered the scene, turned deathly pale, and snatched the sword away. From that day on So-hyeon never held a sword again... but I never forgot that sword, not even once."
The one speaking now was his former disciple, Cheonui Mubong, praised as the greatest martial talent in the entire history of the Sword House.
"...It was a childhood memory, was it not?"
Because the tale was hard to accept at face value, the Guard Pavilion Master carefully voiced his doubt.
"Memory is incomplete and mysterious; it often warps and exaggerates the facts. So—"
"No."
Yeon Seo-rin smiled at the master who was trying so hard to deny it.
"A few months ago, I saw that sword again."
"...What?"
"Do you remember the day I visited Wongak-jeong a few months back?"
The day Daseonrang had arrived at the Luoyang Sword House, and the day he had heard that Yeon Seo-rin had driven out the Emei Sect.
"Well, of course I remember, but—"
"In place of Father and Elder Sister, who were absent, I had to carry the entire future of this vast clan on my shoulders."
The very person who had forced that crushing responsibility upon her fell silent.
"Unable to sleep, I was walking the gardens of Wongak-jeong when So-hyeon found me. He offered no words, no persuasion of any kind."
Yeon Seo-rin smiled.
"Instead, that boy So-hyeon simply showed me a single sword—one stroke formed with his fingers alone."
"...What was that single sword?"
"That sword was—"
In that instant a chill raced across the Guard Pavilion Master's skin. He too was a Boundary Crosser. The sharp, aching sensation that seemed to slice the very air made him whip his head around on pure reflex.
This is—?!
The source of that sensation lay far in the distance—toward the Elder Council Hall.
This feeling—?!
It was as if space itself were being cut. A sensation he could never forget even in dreams. The private ultimate technique of the younger brother who had been the wall dominating his entire life, the Grand Head's signature art.
"Yes."
Yeon Seo-rin stepped up beside the stunned Guard Pavilion Master and gazed in the same direction, lips moving.
"That single sword..."
The stroke that had begun from the direction of the Elder Council Hall punched straight through the outer wall and carved a slender yet impossibly clear line of sword light across the summer firmament, leaving a scar that stretched into the distant sky.
"...Father's signature technique—Severing Life."
As if savoring that wondrous sensation once more, she spoke with the expression of one looking upon something dazzling.
"That is the very sword So-hyeon showed me that night in Wongak-jeong. And it is the sword that severed every chain binding me."
Namgung Hyeok-cheon burst out into the inner courtyard and stared up at the sky.
"Elder Namgung...!"
"D-did you see that...?!"
"That is the Grand Head's...!"
The shouts of the Third Young Master's faction elders reached him as if from a great distance.
Goooooo—
A sword light so long it rivaled a towering summer cumulonimbus. A single wondrous stroke that left a scar upon the firmament. To any member of the Namgung Clan of this generation, it was a nightmare that could never be forgotten.
Since before the founding of the Central Plains nation itself, the supreme sword of this land had been the Namgung Clan's Emperor's Sword Form, and the Namgung Clan's Boundless Firmament Sword Art had been the sword art that represented the Central Plains. The Namgung Clan had been the true Sword House, and its Supreme had been called the Sword King.
Had been.
On that day—the day the Namgung Clan had blocked the main force of the Luoyang Sword House as it set out for Jiangnan.
"So that is the Lord of the Sword House?"
"Still young, I see."
Upon the Namgung sword art that had once stretched as wide and endless as the firmament itself, an indelible scar had been carved, and the sword form once praised as that of an emperor had been driven into the earth.
"Impossible?!"
"Is that thing even human?!"
From that day forward, the name "Sword House" referred only to the Luoyang Sword House, and the people called its lord of that time Heaven's First Sword.
That man was Yeon So-hyeon's father, the Grand Head of the Luoyang Sword House—Yeon Geom-un.
"Has the Grand Head risen from his seat...?!"
"What...?!"
"The Grand Head...?!"
To the stunned elders of the Third Young Master's faction, Namgung Hyeok-cheon's voice arrived.
"...No."
The voice trembled with fury, with frustration, with pain.
"That is..."
He struggled to master himself, yet could not stop the tremor in his words.
"...the Eldest Young Master's sword."
Every mouth fell open in blank shock. Namgung Hyeok-cheon clenched his fists until the knuckles whitened.
"While you were saying those words, you already fell another step behind."
The conversation he had shared with the Chief of the Inner Court flashed through his mind.
"You. All of you still fail to grasp the situation."
The Chief of the Inner Court had raised a skinny, wrinkled hand and pointed at Namgung Hyeok-cheon.
"For those of you who carry Namgung blood, the worst enemy is neither Sa-pae-cheon, nor the Sichuan Tang Clan, nor even the Clan Lord who now lies bedridden."
The Chief of the Inner Court had lifted his hand and pointed outward, toward the Elder Council Hall.
"It is the Eldest Young Master who sits there."
Elder Council Hall, Grand Assembly Chamber.
Dust sifted down from the ceiling and settled upon the corpse of the Yeon-clan elder who had been split cleanly in half and driven into the floor.
So marvelous had the edge of that single stroke been that if one were to press the two halves of the body together along the perfectly straight cut, it seemed the corpse might draw breath and rise again.
The elders did not need to go outside to know. The single sword that had cleaved the wall of the Grand Assembly Chamber would have left a long scar across the sky. And so they forgot even to breathe until Yeon So-hyeon opened his mouth.
"Insolent dogs who do not know their place."
Was this the kind of command the previous Clan Lord had delivered when he thundered?
Every elder whose eyes met his flinched and averted their gaze. The Yeon-clan elders who met that ghostly, ice-blue stare felt their entire bodies turn cold as winter steel.
"Not even the last copper coin of this Sword House is the property of the likes of you."
Was this what it felt like to be cast naked onto the frozen earth of the snow country beyond the northern wastes?
"Not even the last scrap of steel of this Sword House is a blade belonging to the likes of you."
Was this what it felt like to be plunged into the yellow waters of the Yellow River until the lungs filled?
"Not even the last grain of rice of this Sword House is food for the likes of you."
Was this what it felt like to kneel before the judges of hell after death?
"Not a single thing of this Sword House—not the last scrap of anything—belongs to the likes of you."
Only then did the elders understand. The true face of the Eldest Young Master Yeon So-hyeon was not the far-seeing eye that sat in a room and pierced a thousand li by striking every weakness, nor the divine calculation that seized the world and shook it. It was tyranny.
Stronger even than the reek of corpses that filled the chamber, the vivid stench of killing aura rising from the Eldest Young Master's body stabbed into their nostrils and sank deep into their brains.
"All of you will remember this from now on."
With a gaze that overwhelmed every soul present, the Eldest Young Master proclaimed:
"This Sword House belongs to this Eldest Young Master—Yeon So-hyeon."