As expected of the Zhuge clan.

Their entire family business was built on racking up resentment by harming others and stealing their profits through cunning. The directional explosive mechanism, installed just in case the person sitting opposite them needed to be assassinated, was astonishingly powerful. However,

“It really was you.”

The voice flowed out of the burning, smoke-belching armored command carriage.

“What are you all doing?!” Zhuge, clutching his mangled shoulder, shrieked. “Kill him!” Before his voice had even finished echoing—

“Hup…!”

The elite warriors from the Namgung Clan, who were already in close proximity, were sliding into motion. They tread upon the mud, which was deep enough to swallow their knees, as if it were feathers. They raised their drawn swords, shattering the rain, and their blades pierced the carriage like lightning. 

Tang! 

The moment one sword scattered the flames and tore through the carriage’s thick armor—

“Haap…!”

“Hreup!” 

Tatatatata-tang! 

With spirited cries, the swords of the warriors following close behind pierced the carriage in rapid succession. They struck from every direction—front, back, left, and right. Without a single command, they moved as one body, their blades penetrating every angle. It was clear at a glance how much training these elite warriors had shared.

“Dogs of the Namgung family.” But the voice was no longer coming from inside the carriage. “Leeches, wearing the uniform of the Sword Clan, feasting on its wealth and food, yet loyal to none.”

That voice alone, like the sound of molten metal boiling over, was enough to make the warriors’ qi and blood flow in reverse.

“Parasites.” 

Puhwaak! 

Zhuge, who had been desperately applying acupressure to staunch the bleeding from his shoulder, found his efforts wasted.

“Kuaaargh—!”

His qi and blood, thrown into chaos, erupted from his shoulder in a fresh torrent of dark red blood.

“I-It’s Sound Art!” he shrieked in terror. “Everyone, use your internal energy to protect your ears and upper danjeon!”

At his command, the warriors instinctively circulated their internal energy, but,

”Useless.”

Yeon So-hyeon had seen, time and time again, martial artists of considerable skill try to defend against his demonic sound.

“What you should be protecting isn’t that worthless shell of flesh—” It was only natural that he would have developed a counter. “—but that soul, so full of sin.”

The pure demonic qi of the Scripture that Commands the Dark and Quakes the Heavens, carried on the sound art’s profound mystery, slammed into the warriors’ minds, vibrated their danjeons, and made their very meridians boil.

“Keoheok—!”

“Kuk!”

In order of weakest to strongest, they began to spew mouthfuls of black, dead blood.

“The enemy is above!” When someone’s shout made them reflexively look up— 

Flash. 

With the lightning, a dark figure hanging in the air became a black thunderbolt, soundlessly cutting through space to slam into the ground. The first victim struck by that black lightning didn’t even have time to scream. 

Kaaaa-kwang! 

Was this the end of one struck by a celestial iron mace swung by a giant from above the clouds?

The ground buckled under the terrifying force, pushed away in an instant, creating a vacuum at that single point. The victim’s body, made of mere flesh and blood, simply exploded, into thousands, tens of thousands, of gory fragments.

“This martial art—?!”

Even if they were from the Namgung Clan, as men who had served in the Sword Clan, how could they not recognize that signature technique?

“Sword Pinnacle Crushes the Mountain—?!”

The eyes of those who recognized it widened as if they would tear. Sword Pinnacle Crushes the Mountain. A unique martial art. The Transcendent Heavy Sword, Mountain-Shattering Realm.

“Do not panic!” Zhuge’s scream echoed through the chaos. “That is the Grand Young Master!”

At his words, a warrior who had managed to hold his ground on the wildly bucking earth, trusting his animalistic instincts, thrust his sword toward that empty space.

“Die—!”

The Vast Heavens Infinite Sword Art of the Namgung Clan. First Stance, Rock-Shattering Sword. The Namgung sword, said to shatter boulders and pierce cliffs. That very secret art was being unleashed from a sword bearing the clear crest of the Luoyang Sword Clan.

“The Sword Clan’s sword, is not for you.”

Before the warrior’s wide eyes, his own sword, which had been lunging forward like a beam of light, its energy burning white-hot—

Kadeudeudeuk! 

—met the tip of his opponent’s pale, slender Sword Qi Finger. He watched, clearly, as his blade began to crumble from the tip. 

This technique is…?! 

The secret art of the Head of the Council of Elders, the man called the Little Giant. 

Twin Thunders and Moving Wheels. Phoenix Soul Strike.

That was the last sight he ever saw. 

Taang—! 

The Sword Qi Finger, magnified in his vision, pierced through his head, and he was gone. Before the purge of blood could even erupt from the headless corpse, two more warriors used the momentum of their own swords, still stuck in the carriage, to launch a counter-attack.

“Hap—!”

“Hreup—!” 

Vast Heavens Infinite Sword Art. Third Stance, Explosive Burst.

Like a master calligrapher drawing a single, powerful line in one breath, their two white blades shot out from the left and right, slicing through the raindrops to cut their target apart. 

Clang! 

“…!”

Just as their breaths had matched, the sound of their swords snapping like sugarcane, was also one. In the moment they registered the sight of their broken blades floating weightlessly in the air, two Sword Qi Fingers, one from each hand, reaped their heads.

It was the Qi-Dazed Ghost-Severing Slaughter. The Twin Scythe Art of Tang Baek, the “Blood Wind Emissary” of the Tang Clan, the Headhunter of the Ancient Tea Horse Road, manifested through the Grand Young Master’s two hands.

Their heads, neatly severed, were just an inch from their necks when the next warriors arrived with guttural cries. Four men blocked all four cardinal directions, creating an advanced combined-assault formation that vortexed in like a manja (卍) symbol. It was an attack that no one, unless they had three heads and six arms, could possibly handle at once.

“Heheh…”

A low laugh, like bubbling molten iron, was heard. The two broken blades from the previous warriors, still floating in the air, suddenly twitched with an unnatural trajectory and then, shot, through the air.

“…Keok!”

Short death rattles echoed. Two warriors, their hearts still beating as they were bisected, died instantly. 

Clang! 

The two remaining warriors, who had parried the blades that were contemptuously flicked away by Yeon So-hyeon’s Sword Qi Fingers, stumbled back. 

Burst. 

They collapsed with holes pierced through their philtrums. The very blades that had reaped their comrades had returned to take their lives as well.

“Hahahaha!”

“Watch—!”

“Controlling Sword with Qi—!”

Shouts of pure horror erupted from the next wave of attackers, but Yeon So-hyeon, having broken their sharp vanguard, had no intention of letting them attack first again. His manic laughter ceased. A sentence (宣告) fell from his lips.

“All of you, die.”

The secret sword art of the Life-Stealing Ghost Sword. The Asura Five Skandha Extremities. Its ultimate art. The Harmony of the Five Aggregates. The Soft Controls the Hard. One broken blade softly neutralized a warrior’s sword before severing all four of his limbs. The Hard Breaks the Soft. Another blade shattered a different warrior’s sword and split his body in two. And then, the swords they dropped in their death throes rose into the air, each imbued with a different martial principle, each tearing apart a different foe, then moving on to the next… and the next.

With every life that falls, a new sword rises.

As the swords multiply, the death screams multiply. 

This,

—was the pinnacle of the transcendent sword art known as Controlling Sword with Qi.

“Th-This is…”

At first, Zhuge had believed the Grand Young Master had lured him out, alone, for an assassination. He had struggled to escape, and when he finally did, setting his warriors upon him, he thought victory was his.

“This is impossible…!”

But he was wrong. 

Swaaaaaaa— 

Now, there was no more clanging of swords.

No more screams.

There was only the roar of the rain, blanketing everything. Hot steam rose from the fragments of bodies as the cold rain hit them. Swords bearing the Luoyang Sword Clan crest, every single one of them broken, were stuck in the corpses, serving as their tombstones. The occasional crack of lightning served as their funeral rites.

“Reinforcements?!” Zhuge shrieked, his voice echoing alone on the plateau. “Where are the reinforcements?!” He threw the signal flare he had bitten and lit with one hand to the ground.

The earth was already littered with the empty casings of flares he and his men had fired. His forces had been spread out wide to ambush the Grand Young Master. Before they could even see the signals and regroup, the main force had been annihilated. The dozens of masters he had brought were now useless.

“Damn it…!” He ignored his blurring vision from blood loss and fumbled for another flare.

“Is the tantrum over?”

That bizarre, metallic voice—

Thud, thud. 

—and the sound of the lone figure, standing tall, walking slowly toward him.

“Damn it! Damn it!” He bit and fired another flare. 

Piiik— 

But in his panic and weakened state, the flare shot off sideways, buried itself in the mud, and sputtered weakly. 

Slosh, slosh. 

The phosphorus in the flare cast a faint glow on the approaching figure.

“Heek…?!”

The sight of ‘yellow talismans’ plastered all over a white mask, he felt a primal, indescribable terror.

“I-It was you…!”

His mind, muddled by demonic qi, finally recognized the figure’s identity.

“You… you are that monster, the Venerable One of Dark Heavens!”

Why had the Grand Young Master been so confident? He finally understood the reason for that incomprehensible calm during their conversation.

“No.”

But, unexpectedly, the white mask, sealed with talismans written in cinnabar, shook its head.

“I am Yeon So-hyeon.”

Even in that moment, as Zhuge felt his consciousness being chewed alive by the demonic qi, he could not understand the meaning of those words. He couldn’t understand that Yeon So-hyeon had finally begun to perfectly control a part of the demonic qi of the ancient monster, ‘Scripture that Commands the Dark and Quakes the Heavens’.

Yeon So-hyeon called this new form: Half-Immortal, Half-Demon.

Yeon So-hyeon removed the mask.

The talismans, their purpose served, dissolved and burst into flames with a puff of ominous smoke.

“I’m coming soon,” he said, wiping a thin trickle of blood from his lips as he looked at the sky, which was beginning to clear from the north. “Woonjeong.”

His form vanished, as if melting into the shadows of the retreating clouds.

“…Over there!”

All that was left for Zhuge’s belated forces, was the horrific aftermath left by the man who carried the destiny of the Star of Heavenly Slaughter.