The Moyong Family's Sword Unit
The Sword Arts of the Sword House.
The Luoyang Sword House had never originally been a house of the sword—nor even a martial house at all.
Yet the ancestors of the Yeon clan, drawing upon the wealth and influence they had forged as a great family, gathered and studied martial arts on a vast scale.
And in the end, through long years of effort, they comprehensively collected and synthesized every sword art they could find, creating an entirely new method of the sword.
The family head of that age gave it its name.
When one awakens to the heart of the sword, the sword answers with its cry—
Thus it was called Geomsim Geommyeong—Sword Heart, Sword Chiming.
And as the Sword House’s Geomsim Geommyeong was handed down through the generations, countless warriors of the house exhausted themselves in its study and refinement.
Until, at last, someone gave birth to an ultimate that transcended the existing secrets.
They named it a Secret Ultimate Technique.
And now, in this very place, the Eldest Young Master of the Luoyang Sword House traced one of those secret ultimates through the empty air with his sword-finger.
The sword art Elder Paeng—born into a saber house yet so devoted to the sword that he cast his lot with the Sword House—had finally reached after breaking through the wall under the Eldest Young Master’s guidance.
“……!”
Through the thick smoke that blanketed every direction, the Eldest Young Master’s sword-light burst forth and brushed past the neck of a Moyong Family warrior as if merely grazing it.
A flash—
The sword-light flared without a single sound.
Yet every onlooker distinctly heard, inside their own skull, the cry of a sword.
“----!”
In the instant after the light passed, the wide-eyed Moyong warrior’s head parted cleanly from his neck and sailed into the air.
“He’s a master!”
One step too late.
“Scatter!”
No—two steps too late, the warning of the Moyong Sword Unit’s captain finally rang out.
But by then—
Chara-rara-rang—
A cry so pure it raised gooseflesh seemed to bore straight into the warriors’ ears.
This is the Sword House’s—
In the very moment they understood what that crystalline sound was—
—Sword Chiming?
—they realized that they, too, stood within the reach of the sword-light that had flashed in every direction, just like the first man who had lost his head.
Kwaddeuk!
The man whose chest the light had touched was cleaved clean through the torso. The one whose head it had brushed was split from crown to chin. The one whose legs it had grazed had both thighs torn apart.
Flutter—
The black silkworm-silk coat of Eldest Young Master Yeon So-hyeon billowed once, and the neatly laid white flagstones beneath him were lacquered scarlet with blood.
“Damn it…!”
The captain ground his teeth.
“It’s already too late!”
In the blink of an eye, four elite warriors of the Moyong Family had lost their lives.
“Counterattack at once!”
Yet they, too, were veterans who had endured every kind of battle simply by belonging to the Moyong Family’s Second Sword Unit.
As one, they wheeled the swords they had already drawn for anti-cavalry tactics.
“Cut them down!”
“Hup!”
Before the captain’s order even reached them, the blades were already flying.
Anti-Cavalry Group Combat Doctrine
Single-Point Simultaneous Volley
Kareureung!
Swords scraped roughly free of their scabbards, trailing sprays of crimson sparks as they launched in a single volley. It felt as if one stood alone on the firing line of an entire army’s massed discharge.
“……!”
But the corner of the Eldest Young Master’s mouth only curled higher in open mockery.
The Moyong warriors realized too late: the Sword House technique that had just claimed four lives—the sword-finger still tracing light, the pure-white trajectories still braided with the cry of the blade—had never finished its single breath.
Chara-rara-rara-rang—!
From the beginning, the Secret Ultimate Extreme Enlightenment: Chaotic Hemp was a sword art meant to reduce a localized zone to scorched earth and total incapacitation in a single inhalation. That one breath stretched long; it did not end until it broke.
Chara-rara-rara-rang—!
A sword launched from its scabbard was intercepted mid-air, shattered into fragments, and sent spinning away. The warrior felt the wild thrashing of his own blade through his fingertips—
“……!”
—yet never noticed that his head had already been split open.
“…Kh!”
“…Keheok!”
Wrists still gripping flying swords were severed, blood welling and spilling from the stumps. A warrior clutching a broken blade had his chest carved open, spraying a mist of blood into the air. A man whose arms had both been sheared away spun once, brushed past Yeon So-hyeon, and crashed to the ground.
Kwajajajak!
As if that were not enough, the Eldest Young Master’s sword-lights smashed the flagstones in every direction and shredded even the black smoke itself.
In another heartbeat five or six more lives were extinguished. This—truly—was the sword of scorched earth: Extreme Enlightenment: Chaotic Hemp.
“You bastard!”
Before still more Moyong warriors could be swallowed by that storm of light, the captain of the Sword Unit stamped a ferocious foot into the ground.
Dragon Gate Pillar
“Sto—p—!”
Accompanied by a lion’s roar laden with inner power, the floor struck by the captain’s Dragon Gate Pillar split and heaved outward in every direction at once. The intent was clear: shake the footing of Yeon So-hyeon mid-technique and sever his sword art.
Yet—
“……!”
Eldest Young Master Yeon So-hyeon walked as though the ground were still flat. With light, unhurried steps he climbed each upheaved flagstone one after another. The roar was nowhere near enough to disturb a mind as still as a mirror of clear water.
Chareureureureung—!
And even while he did so, the Eldest Young Master continued to draw his sword-finger through the air, scattering fresh arcs of light.
“Hup!”
It did not matter. The Moyong Family’s Dragon Gate Pillar was not only a technique for destroying balance; as a stamped foot it also served as the ignition form of their internal-energy arts.
Asura Blade
If the opponent poured down a storm of sword-strikes, one need only raise an equal storm to cancel it. Sword-light bloomed from the captain’s blade and began intercepting the Eldest Young Master’s own.
“Heup…!”
The Eldest Young Master’s assault had begun nearly half a breath earlier, yet—
The odds are more than enough…!
In that instant, through the shredding light high above, the captain saw the smile still playing at Yeon So-hyeon’s lips grow deeper still.
He’s smiling…?
What had he forgotten?
The back of his skull prickled. Gooseflesh rose along his nape. In the same heartbeat that crisis sense and focus sharpened until the opponent’s sword-finger burned itself into his vision—
“Charge!”
A single command from Moyong Un-jeong.
Kwaddeuk!
Kwajik!
While the Sword Unit’s attention was locked on the Eldest Young Master’s nightmare storm of blades, the Great General’s Guard slammed into their flank.
Sufficient run-up. The overwhelming mass of heavy cavalry. Layered atop that, the formidable single-point breakthrough of the Guard’s high-level internal power.
“-----!”
“---!”
There was not even time for screams. The front rank of the Sword Unit simply burst apart as though struck by point-blank cannon fire. Before anyone could blink, the Great General’s Guard had already smashed through the second and third ranks as well.
“Stop them!”
Only at the fourth rank did the Moyong warriors manage to reorient and begin a counter-assault.
“Ha!”
But by then the Great General’s Guard had already discarded the spent charging lances, drawn their cavalry sabers, and met the attack head-on.
In a single breath, Moyong swords and cavalry sabers crossed from every direction. Screams erupted without end.
“…Keok!”
“Guaak—!”
The victors were the Great General’s Guard. The gently curved cavalry sabers received the Moyong blades with flexible ease, absorbing the shock and splitting wrists and forearms in return. Those sabers—and the refined skill that wielded them—were the crystallized fruit of countless clashes with the northern tribes who lived their lives in the saddle.
The moment the Sword Unit’s anti-cavalry doctrine collapsed under Yeon So-hyeon’s intrusion, a dark shadow had already fallen across their fate.
“Do not stop! Break through!”
“Hold the line! Even if you throw your lives away, stop the breakthrough!”
Moyong Un-jeong’s voice, thick with internal power, tangled with the furious shouts of the Sword Unit’s vice-captain.
And still—
Chara-rara-rara-rang!
How long could one man’s single breath last? The Eldest Young Master’s sword-finger had yet to stop.
“Kek…!”
A Moyong warrior who had just managed to turn aside a cavalry saber, a triumphant smile still on his face, clutched his throat and collapsed. Another who burst from the rear ranks to strike a Guard warhorse had both eyeballs slit open lengthwise.
“Uaaaaaah—!”
A scream more than a shout tore from the throat of the Sword Unit captain as he continued to intercept Yeon So-hyeon’s light.
Why…?
In the time it took him to deflect a single one of the Eldest Young Master’s strikes, that same sword-finger claimed two more lives.
Why in heaven’s name?!
In the time it took him to delay Yeon So-hyeon’s foot by a single step, the Guard’s warhorses advanced three more paces.
At this rate the formation collapses…!
As befit a captain who led an entire Sword Unit of the Moyong Family, he understood at once that this was the irreversible turning point of the battle.
“Keuaaa—!”
Once the judgment was made, further thought was unnecessary.
“Aaaaaah—!”
His heart pounded at a monstrous rate, wringing blood from itself; the accelerated flow, fused with pure true qi, flooded every vessel of his body in a single surge. Capillaries in both eyes burst under the pressure; every vein across his frame stood out in livid ropes.
This was the death-resolved combat stance of a Moyong Family warrior—
Die and Live.
I can see it…!
At last Yeon So-hyeon’s every motion resolved into crystal clarity.
I’m catching up…!
The boundless martial principles contained within that movement poured into his brain as though they would burn it white-hot.
“Keuaaaaaaaaaaah—!”
He forgot whether the thing in his hand was a sword or whether the sword was his hand. The short shout that tore from his own mouth stretched impossibly long, as though someone had seized and drawn it out—the moment of self-forgetting arrived.
“Huu—.”
And within that heightened sense he confirmed it: the Eldest Young Master’s long, long single breath had finally ended.
Now—!
His sword pulsed like a living thing and accelerated once more.
But then—
“You would throw your life away in a fight like this?”
Was the voice that reached his ear a whisper? A transmitted sound? Or had the upper dantian, briefly flung wide open in that moment of self-forgetting, simply read the other’s heart?
“……!”
He had been certain he was watching—reading—the Eldest Young Master’s every move. Yet Yeon So-hyeon’s clenched fist had vanished completely from his sight, only to reappear as fingertips brushing against his own side.
And—
Tok.
In a state of absolute breath-hold, the Eldest Young Master’s fingertips opened, and for some reason an inch-force manifested.
“……?”
Martial arts that transcended ordinary principle. Even an upper dantian flung open in an instant could not comprehend it.
As the captain was flung like refuse into a far corner, Yeon So-hyeon’s voice reached his ear.
“For a moment—just sleep like that.”