Just in Time
Those of a pessimistic bent like to say that everything in life is utterly futile.
Their words were not entirely wrong — for little in this world is as futile as the life of a martial artist.
A martial artist may spend his entire life cultivating the martial path, only for victory and defeat to be decided in the span of mere days. And those contests were, more often than not, gambles staked with his very life. How much more futile could a thing be?
The jianghu — the murim — was a place where blades crossed more often than tongues wagged in a back-alley quarrel, and so it is fair to call a martial artist's life, in the end, a gambling table where life itself is the stake.
Kwaang!
A sword aura slammed into Guardian Qi.
Guardian Qi was a defensive art of peerless caliber, yet against a brilliantly gleaming sword aura it became little different from any other means of protection. If the Guardian Qi was stronger, it held; if the sword aura was stronger, it broke. That was all there was to it.
Pakang!
The Guardian Qi shattered into pieces — which meant the sword aura had been the stronger.
That was the whole of the story. In the martial way, the stronger prevails; even at the Harmony Realm, this remained the truth.
Shk!
The sword that had blasted the Guardian Qi apart ran the man through the heart.
"Kehk—"
That sound — the one countless martial artists leave behind in place of a final testament — carved through the air. The sound of life guttering out; a death rattle, you might well call it.
"Safe travels."
Having paid his parting courtesy to his opponent, the swordsman drew the blade back out of the pierced heart.
The light of life drained from the dying man's eyes in an instant.
"Hoo—"
The victor was a master of Hao Gate — Ma Sok, the Soul-Chasing Life-Taker.
Of all the battles raging across the Dancheon Clan, his had been the first to reach its conclusion.
"The Heavenly Demon... descends..."
Shff.
"Tsk."
For all his hard-won triumph, Ma Sok's brow knotted deep. He could not fathom the faith of a fanatic who smiled and murmured his creed even while dying — and so he had gone so far as to behead the man mid-prayer. The deed left his mood sour.
"What now?"
Ma Sok had done his part, but he did not rest on it. He had not forgotten that his purpose was not the glory of a duel won, but the salvation of the Dancheon Clan.
A man who had clawed his way up from the very bottom of the world, seasoned by every hardship the streets could offer, Ma Sok knew one thing well: a battle is, in the end, a current of momentum.
His gaze swept across the battlefield.
The fight, as it stood, was dead even. And he knew that in a taut tug-of-war, the slightest added weight on one side sends the advantage tipping over, past any hope of recovery. That little bit of weight had been left to him — and at that, Ma Sok's sour mood melted away. The chance to repay the debt he owed Dancheon Myeong had come at last.
In truth, the situation as it stood was the Demon Cultists' fatal blunder: they had set only a single Extreme Demon master against Ma Sok. Unlike Yi Chun-baek, who had only just set foot in the Harmony Realm, the Soul-Chasing Life-Taker was a man whose mastery had ripened past proficiency into full maturity. They ought to have attached one more master to Ma Sok instead of committing three against the escort corps — just as they had done against the Dancheon patriarch. Had they done so, matters might have unfolded differently, but no man can turn back the road already traveled. That one small miscalculation meant the battle had tipped heavily in the Dancheon Clan's favor. It helped, too, that word of Ma Sok was a closely guarded secret even within Hao Gate; the Cultists had never known what they were facing.
Ma Sok's gaze turned toward Dancheon Myeong.
Ma Sok had been first to settle his duel, but Dancheon Myeong had been first to cut an enemy down outright. One of the three assigned to him lay sprawled on the ground with his tongue lolling out — impossible to miss.
Kwaaang!
Cheolsanmagun and Dancheon Myeong were colliding with savage force. Sword met sword even as each man ceaselessly hunted the other's openings — a banquet of divine skill unfolding before the eye.
"Hm."
It was a chance to repay a great debt, but sadly, that place was no battlefield of Ma Sok's. The level of the fight there soared far beyond anything he could intrude upon — and more than that, his instincts were pointing him elsewhere. The field where his benefactor fought was not the watershed that would swiftly decide this battle.
"There, then."
Analysis was among Ma Sok's specialties, and his sharp eyes picked out the crux of the battlefield at a glance. He had found the ground where his intervention would count for the most.
Whoosh!
Ma Sok's form shot through the air and came down beside the head of the Dancheon Clan — Dancheon Gang — who was holding two enemies at bay at once. Arriving beside the monster who, though only a Harmony Realm master, was managing to pin down two Extreme Demon masters, Ma Sok felt an ease he had never known before.
"Might I lend you a hand?"
Ma Sok asked with perfect courtesy — the respect owed to the head of a great clan, and to a master of the highest order.
"I'd be glad of it."
The patriarch answered generously. Dancheon Gang was a proud martial artist, and at the same time a man who would cast aside his own honor for his family's sake. Ma Sok's judgment, then, had been impeccable.
"Shall we?"
"Let's."
Leaving Dancheon Gang's composed reply behind him, Ma Sok launched himself first.
Kaaang!
"You're with me."
"Tch."
The Extreme Demon master had no room to refuse, and before long he was locked blade to blade with Ma Sok.
"Come at me."
Dancheon Gang spoke to the remaining Extreme Demon master. The words were quietly murmured, but their weight was immense. At long last, his rage at the invaders who had dared attack his clan was bleeding through into his voice.
"Kgh!"
A fight that even at two-to-one had promised nothing was now one against one. The Extreme Demon invader had no chance of victory. And yet to never fall back from the struggle regardless — that, one might say, was the very essence of the demonic path.
"Die!"
True to a master who had reached the Extreme Demon Realm, the Cultist detonated his latent power in an instant and came hurtling at Dancheon Gang, eyes blazing blood-red — the writhing black currents unique to demonic qi thrown in for good measure. His unleashed gibbon-arm qi piled atop the innate power of the Extreme Demon Realm, and a colossal force like raging breakers reached for the patriarch's life. Having burned his latent power, the man had no other move left to him; an ultimate technique — fit to be called a single-strike kill, or a shared doom — blossomed.
But...
Dancheon Gang's lightbody art trod upon the clouds and twisted his form lightly aside.
Hwoong—
The Extreme Demon master's do-or-die strike carved hollowly through empty air. The essence of Cloud-Treading Steps had bloomed at the patriarch's feet.
Shff.
Along with a clean, crisp ring of cutting steel.
"Remember this well. Raw destructive power is not the measure of strength."
Dancheon Gang's level voice rolled across the field.
"Ughhh..."
Thud.
The Extreme Demon master, his back laid open, pitched forward and never rose again. He would never live to remember the advice.
Shk!
"Safe travels."
"Grrk."
Ma Sok drove his blade into the Extreme Demon master's throat. It was, in truth, an immaculately clean piece of work.
Dancheon Gang and Ma Sok, parted to settle their respective duels of life and death, stood facing one another again in fewer than ten breaths.
"So it was you, I take it — the thieving cat that's been slipping over our clan's wall from time to time."
"...You knew of that, my lord?"
Ma Sok asked back, startled, and Dancheon Gang smiled faintly.
"Well, you hardly seemed like any harm to the family, so I let you be. Seems that was the right call."
The man had become a benefactor of the clan; next time, he might well be handed a proper pass through the gates.
A brief exchange of such talk—
"You've room to spare, I see."
Bang Yeo-baek, the Dancheon Clan's Escort Captain, came sailing down through the air. His sword was drunk with fresh blood; he, too, had evidently just finished off an Extreme Demon master of his own.
"That you do. And this is no time to be savoring it."
As he spoke, Dancheon Gang's eyes turned toward the escort corps at the rear. Part of it was faith in Dancheon Myeong, who fought at the very tip of the line — but above all, shielding his clansmen was a patriarch's first duty.
Perhaps because so little time had passed, the escort corps was still holding its own against three Extreme Demon masters. Dozens of masters wielding sword qi had formed a square formation devoted wholly to defense; a few had perished, but not many. A great stroke of fortune, that. And among them, one figure stood out above all the rest.
"You dogs! Eyes over here! I am Dancheon Hak, rightful heir of the Dancheon Sword Clan!"
It was Dancheon Hak, planted at the head of the escort corps, bellowing at the top of his lungs as he unfurled his threads of sword qi. That the clan's heir did not know to spare his own life — one would be right to call it a folly. And yet at the same time, it was a bearing one could only call the most perfect imaginable in a clan's successor. For the heart with which Dancheon Hak now stepped forward was the very heart of Dancheon Gang, who had borne the patriarch's seat for a decade and more. Because Dancheon Hak — a man risen to Transcendent Peak, gazing up at the Harmony Realm — had taken the foremost line and drawn the Extreme Demon masters' eyes to himself, the escort corps had been able to keep its losses to a minimum. In the process, of course, his clothes had been shredded to rags, and fresh blood ran from wounds all over his body. Put the other way, though, he bore no injury grave enough to threaten his life — thanks in no small part to the escort corps, who like Dancheon Hak himself had staked their lives to turn aside the Cultists' deadliest killing blows.
"I'll leave that side to you."
Guarding the clansmen first was a duty binding on Dancheon Gang and Bang Yeo-baek — but not on Ma Sok. Entrusting Yi Chun-baek, locked in the fiercest duel of them all, to Ma Sok, the two men hurried toward their clansmen.
"Kgh!"
Against the Dancheon escort's far-from-trivial resistance, the Extreme Demon masters were already visibly rattled. The moment Dancheon Gang and Bang Yeo-baek joined the fray, the fight on that side of the field could be counted as good as over.
Ma Sok's lightbody art — the same that had so easily cleared the Dancheon Clan's walls — carried him to Yi Chun-baek's side in the thick of his struggle.
"Need a hand?"
Yi Chun-baek shook his head at the question.
"Grant me this chance."
"Understood."
Understanding that heart, Ma Sok nodded and drew back the distance.
"My thanks."
The Vagabond Swordsman, Yi Chun-baek. This was the first ferocious battle of his since reaching the Harmony Realm — and his opponent was a master of the Extreme Demon Realm. No finer test could be asked for.
"Come at me again."
The Vagabond was growing in real time — which meant the road to the King of Vagabonds, the man whose name would one day thunder as the Decapitator of Demon Cultists, was not a long one. Yi Chun-baek himself knew nothing of it, but this achievement stood at least five years ahead of anything from the days of Myeong-gae.
In truth, I had room to spare just now.
How much room? Enough that even in the thick of battle I could take in the whole shape of the field — and enough, moreover, to dodge Cheolsanmagun's attack and, with one lightning-fast punch, blast apart the skull of the last Extreme Demon master standing.
Thump.
A fist laden with hardened qi had burst that skull, and one more life passed on without even a death rattle to its name. The bastards who had spent this fight circling me like an irritation were all cleared away now.
"You're all that's left."
I said it to Cheolsanmagun, who had not wavered even with his subordinates felled to a man. He was a man every bit as unshakable as the epithet he carried.
"Is that so."
The faint smile lingering on Cheolsanmagun's face grated on me. Perhaps that had something to do with my spiritual perception, which even now kept ringing its alarms without pause.
"You had best prepare for death as well."
For the moment, I would do what was mine to do. Cheolsanmagun fell short of me, granted — but he was unmistakably a man who had set foot in the threshold of the realm called Profound, or Transcendent Demon. And as I have said time and again, between those who walk the same realm, there is precious little that is absolute.
Even so, I did not believe I would lose. My spiritual perception had turned conviction and whispered it to me — the certainty that I could beat this man. Whether that was because I was exceptional or because the Yakseon Heart Decision was simply that magnificent, I could not say — but one thing was certain: without eleven straight days of endless sparring against Pahwang, such composure would have been far beyond me. It was right, as I had thought, to call his tutelage a fortuitous encounter. Next time we met, I decided, I would have to treat him to at least one fine cup of Geomnamchun.
Whoosh!
As if bound by a prior promise, Cheolsanmagun's form and mine shot up into the empty air together. It began with Fish Rising to the Heavens, and as Ladder to Heaven unfolded one step after another, our forms soon found themselves higher than the great hall's eaves.
Kwaang!
Kuguung!
Swords of another order altogether — blades that had taken on visible form, like a whole flurry of stars — met in fierce, resounding union. Crude still, yes, but was this not a body capable of even treading the Void-Treading Steps? I was yet too green to wage a fight while properly executing them, but swinging a sword mid-air atop Ladder to Heaven posed no great difficulty.
Kwaaang!
Two men risen high into the sky, neither falling, endlessly trading sword for sword — to those watching from below, it would have been no stretch to call it a contest of immortals.
Shiiing—!
How long did we wander the heavens?
Tap.
"Hoo—"
Steadying my breath, I set foot on the earth — and found Harmony Realm martial artists arrayed in a ring all around me. It meant Dancheon Gang, Bang Yeo-baek, Ma Sok, and Yi Chun-baek had all seen their decisive battles through, splendidly, and taken their places. The momentum of victory had crossed over to us, complete and whole.
Yet even as I came down to the ground, not one of them stirred. They had no intention of intruding upon my contest — I knew it for what it was: their trust in me, and their consideration.
Tap.
On the far side, Cheolsanmagun touched down as well. His gaze swept over his subordinates sprawled across the ground — and the emotion in that gaze was, unmistakably, something poised between satisfaction and gladness.
"What in the world is it you're preparing?"
Cheolsanmagun made no effort to hide his feelings, and I asked with a creeping sense of dread. Call it the old nature of an informant who could never stomach an unanswered question.
A chill shot down my spine.
There was no longer any need to press him for his answer. A dread so vicious, a sense of crisis so searing, had closed over my spine.
"Just in time."
A voice utterly devoid of emotion drifted out of the void.
And there, trampling the heavens themselves underfoot, a death that none could resist stood alone.
My spiritual perception — it had been pointing at that existence all along.