The Extreme Sword Dragon (9)
It was like watching a single, beautiful dance unfold.
Nazar approached with fluid, silent grace, her sleeves—easily twice the length of her arms—wreathed in the crimson-gold flames from before. She moved as though performing an elegant choreography. When she swept her arm, the flame-clad sleeve lashed out, aiming for my entire body. Its range was too wide to dodge, so I raised my blade vertically and chose to deflect it.
Whoosh.
A hand burst through the flames, scattering sparks. Nazar’s long, razor-sharp nails streaked toward my face. I poured qi into my opposite hand and slapped the strike aside, then took a single step with the Heaven-Suppressing Divine Step.
She staggered, her form flickering amid the fire. I seized the opening and thrust my sword toward her arm. Or rather, I corrected myself—I definitely felt the sensation of cutting something. Yet it wasn’t the soft give of human flesh. What scattered was nothing more than white cloth. That was all.
The vivid red blood droplets I had secretly hoped for never appeared.
“Did I only graze her?”
Had she simply been faster than my sword? No. It felt more like a perfectly timed evasion. She must have used that bizarre body technique of hers.
In that instant, Nazar’s sleeve flew at me again. From both sides in turn, sometimes nearly simultaneous, occasionally focusing all her power into a single strike—an unrelenting symphony of flame. Even blocking them was troublesome enough, but the flame-wrapped sections refused to be cut, as if they were no longer mere fabric.
“...Or is she actually infusing qi into the cloth?”
Wrapping qi around cloth like that demanded at least twice the difficulty and precision required to imbue a flexible sword with sword qi. Still, the fact that I was growing accustomed to her attacks as time passed was an advantage. The trajectories and rhythm were all consistent.
“How fortunate,” Nazar said, her voice calm and leisurely. It was the sort of gentle tone one might expect from a kind person. Up until now, contrary to my expectations, I had been the one slowly being pushed back.
But the words that followed came in an entirely different voice—laden with ridicule and mockery. The corners of her lips curved skyward.
“The trajectories and rhythm are all consistent, aren’t they?”
The flames coiled around her sleeves suddenly surged upward. As I raised my sword to meet the descending strike, her arm twisted at an unnatural angle and the attack came hurtling in from the side.
“That’s what you thought, yes?”
I tried to react and deflect it, but I only managed half the motion. The left side of my waist where the flames had struck burned with searing pain. I had no breath to spare for a groan. The flames rushed in again immediately. I met them with dozens of sword clashes, blocking frantically. As she drew closer, Nazar whispered softly.
“It’s been far too peaceful for you lately, hasn’t it? You’ve grown rather weak.”
Weak? Was that truly the right word? It was something only someone who had witnessed a “stronger me” even once could say. Since my rebirth, I had never once been lazy about growing stronger. Not for a single moment. Every day, I became stronger than the day before.
So which version of “strong me” had Nazar seen? The answer was obvious—before the regression. Her point of comparison had to be the me from before I returned.
For an instant, I lost control and swung my sword. The tip moved so fast it couldn’t even be tracked. Caught off guard by the suddenly ferocious assault, Nazar twisted her body and devoted herself entirely to defense. She focused on guarding with the broad surface of one sleeve. Even as the multi-layered flames around it were sliced apart, it still managed to block more than half of my sword qi.
And through it all, her attacks continued to weave strange trajectories. Little by little, I regained my composure. At the same time, rational thought returned.
Now that I considered it, I had definitely seen this before. It wasn’t particularly fast, but the bizarre arcs and transcendent area of effect—soft and unpredictable like a dancing shaman.
“...Nazar. No.”
I had seen it. In fact, I had faced it directly. It was back when my sword had been far stronger than it was now. Around the time I had just begun to be regarded as one of the Ten Venerables, the Demonic Cult held a massive ranking war.
One of my opponents had been the woman evaluated as the cult’s second-in-command and its strongest female martial artist. Having reached the Ten Venerables more than a decade before me, the difference in her prowess compared to my previous opponents was overwhelming.
She possessed neither a special constitution nor inner energy as vast as a river or sea. What truly set her apart was her utterly unpredictable movement. The Flame Dance—crimson flames wrapped around sleeves as large as her body while she danced. In the end, I had endured the flames with my own body and torn her apart with sword force in a madman’s desperate method.
Regrettably, I never learned her name. She never offered it, and in my deranged state at the time, I hadn’t cared to ask. But I knew the title by which the murim world called her.
A calamity that shook the heavens. In other words—
Cheondong Yoha.
I forced my way forward, pushing against the flames that assailed me relentlessly from both sides. She gave ground, inch by inch. I tried to drive her completely out of the arena. Yet, as if she had anticipated it—or perhaps not—she caught her balance on her toes, twisted her body sideways, and sprang back toward the center of the stage.
“You may call me Nazar, Shin-gun. It is my real name, after all.”
It was meaningless chatter during a duel. I ignored it and fired a slash of sword qi. A horizontal cut swept across the sparring ground. Translucent sword qi raced toward her along its path. She leaped lightly upward and dropped both sleeves to the floor to block it. At the same time, I targeted her airborne form and advanced again.
“...You’re still far too slow.”
Her body seemed to pitch forward, only to freeze mid-motion and snap backward. My sword cut through empty air once more, but I had predicted it and immediately struck downward.
“Oh my? That one deserves some points.”
She crossed both hands to create a wall of flame that stopped my descending blade, then immediately whipped chains in every direction.
“...How much do you remember? From where to where?”
It was clear she remembered her past life. Terms like Shin-gun or Yoha would have been incomprehensible to anyone who hadn’t lived through the previous timeline. But whether she remembered everything clearly from the start like I did, or whether her memories were somewhat hazy like Namgung Seha’s, I couldn’t tell.
“Regardless of where or how much, I remember far more than you do.”
Far more? How could she be so certain? I had never told her how much I remembered.
No. The question itself had been wrong. Half-absorbing the flames with my body, I drove forward with sword qi and asked again.
“Let me rephrase. When did you die?”
Cheondong Yoha—Nazar—offered a small smile as if to confirm my guess and answered.
“Ten-some years after you died, when the Demonic Path conquered the world.”
The Demonic Cult’s victory wasn’t surprising. What stunned me was the first part. Ten-some years was an eternity, even for martial artists who lived long lives at the pinnacle of their realms. My mouth fell open slightly at the vast gap. Nazar let out a soft, incredulous laugh.
“Why are you the one looking shocked? I’m the one who should be surprised.”
With those words, the faint smile vanished from her face as though it had never existed. Her expression grew colder by the second. She roughly unfurled flames from her sleeve, shoving me to the far edge of the stage, and glared at my sword with open contempt.
“You’ve fallen so far. Your sword.”
Was this provocation? No—her eyes were utterly sincere. But since I didn’t agree in the slightest, I simply ignored her and pressed forward, swinging my blade rapidly.
“Haa…”
She let out a sigh as if she found me pathetic and leaned her body backward. At the same time, she pivoted on her right leg and attacked me from the outside.
“Your sword was born from poison, perfected through madness, and completed as killing intent. Now all that remains is poison that has merely changed direction.”
An attack aimed at my leg. There was no way to block a strike that flew in nearly flush with the ground.
“Of course, your sword speed was so transcendent that no one could even see it with the naked eye, which is why they couldn’t counter it. Aside from that, your swordsmanship was nothing but a third-rate style devoid of any subtlety, principle, or deeper meaning. Looking at it again, it’s practically a miracle you ever reached a higher realm.”
That was why I took another step backward with the Heaven-Suppressing Divine Step. The fluttering sleeve lost its power and fell limply to the floor. I had escaped her range.
“You’ve learned one more thing, I see? How admirable.”
After watching the Heaven-Suppressing Divine Step a few times and tilting her head, she spoke as if praising a baby who had just managed to roll over for the first time. Then she smiled faintly and closed the distance in an instant.
“So do try harder.”
Flame barriers surged from every direction. I swung my sword against the flames closing in from all sides, pushing them back with the wind pressure of my strikes.
“Because if you remain like this, you’ll only lose.”