He had no name.
No, to be precise, he had one, but he had forgotten it.
He retained a faint memory that his family had called him something when he was young, but before he could memorize his own name, they lost their lives to pirates. And those pirates, he recalled, had sold him as a slave to another pirate ship.
“Hey, you! A mere rower awakened internal energy?!”
The one who took in the boy growing up as a rowing slave was the captain of that pirate ship. The captain taught him basic cultivation methods and swordsmanship.
“You’re completely crazy about the sword, living with it glued to your side. From now on, you are Sword Addict!”
From that day on, he became Sword Addict.
The pirate captain also liked the fact that he rarely spoke.
For a time, that twisted favoritism continued.
“Good! Sword Addict, you will be the next captain!”
But when the captain expressed his satisfaction at Sword Addict’s accumulating martial prowess—
“Kuh…!”
He stabbed the captain.
“Y-You crazy bastard, biting the hand that fed you…!”
Sword Addict slowly drove his blade into the eyeballs of the screaming captain, whose chest had been split open.
“Aaaagh—!”
Sword Addict did not remember his own name, but he had never forgotten that it was pirates who had killed his entire family. That, at least, remained etched in his mind.
“Sword Addict has gone mad!”
“Kill him! Kill him!”
At first, the pirates rushed him with bloodshot eyes and drawn blades, but later, they rubbed their hands together, unable to even meet his gaze.
“P-Please spare us!”
“We will serve you as captain!”
But Sword Addict chased down and killed every last one, even those who jumped into the sea.
“……”
After detonating the gunpowder and blowing up the pirate ship, he loaded his wound-covered body onto a small boat and drifted aimlessly. He didn’t know the way back to his hometown.
“Huh? This guy is alive?”
“Look at him, wearing several swords despite his state.”
Coincidentally, it was another group of pirates who fished him out. Recovering his strength while drinking the bare minimum of water they gave him—delighted as they were to have salvaged a slave—Sword Addict waited.
“Hey, Mute. Do you see that?”
In the meantime, Sword Addict’s name had become Mute.
“……”
The pirate pointed into the distance, mocking him as he sat bound in chains.
“That pier you see over there is the slave market of Shanghai where you’ll be sold.”
Mute asked, “…Is that so.” It was a voice used for the first time in so long that it felt grotesque even to himself.
“W-What the?! Fuck?! You weren’t a mute?!”
“Is that place, Shanghai, part of the Central Plains Nation?”
The pirate said yes.
And that became his last will and testament.
Having sunk yet another pirate ship, Mute swam to land with nothing but his body.
And then, he hunted pirates.
That was all he remembered. He didn’t know which pirate ship had attacked his village, nor which specific pirate had killed his family. But he remembered clearly that pirates were the killers, and that was enough for him.
“I-It’s the Crazy Water Ghost!”
In the meantime, his name changed from Crazy Water Ghost to—
“It’s the Pirate Butcher!”
—the Pirate Butcher.
“Young Hero, you are the benefactor of our village!”
Sometimes he was called a hero, sometimes a chivalrous warrior.
“……”
Time flowed. He felt no guilt about killing people. He forgot the fear that he himself might die. He didn’t bother attaching meaning to life, nor value to living.
Kill the Buddha, Kill the Patriarch, Kill the Father, Kill the Mother.
If you meet a ghost, cut the ghost; if you meet a Buddha, cut the Buddha.
Then one day.
After slaughtering a pirate crew that had sailed upriver into the inland of the Central Plains alone, he was finally dying slowly by the riverside.
“Hoh…! It is as if you are not a person, but a single sword.”
The person who discovered and rescued him was a young man who introduced himself as the Patriarch of the Luoyang Sword Clan. He asked him:
“Will you not come with me?”
He didn’t quite remember why he accepted the offer in that moment. Perhaps he was tired of the pirates that kept appearing no matter how many he killed, or perhaps it was just a small whim or curiosity.
But what was clear was that, in the end, he offered his sword to the man who was the Patriarch of the Luoyang Sword Clan and the Number One Sword under the Heavens.
In return, he gained a moniker.
The moniker ‘Life-Stealing Ghost Sword’.
“Do you not need a new name?”
He had shaken his head at his lord.
“I have a name. I simply do not remember it.”
***
“Shoot! I said shoot!”
The rebels atop the inner fortress wall hurriedly drew their bows and fired arrows, but it was useless.
“——!”
The skin of the black ox was like dark iron, deflecting arrowheads, and the muscles of the yellow ox were like steel cables, snapping arrow shafts upon impact.
“——!”
“Aaaagh!”
As the two spiritual beasts rampaged madly, disrupting the battle lines, friendly forces were struck and killed by the blind arrows instead.
“Cease fire! I said cease—!”
Smash!
An officer who was hurriedly waving his hand upward to signal a ceasefire was rammed by the head of a spiritual beast and sent flying into the void.
“……!”
The sight of a heavily armed man soaring as if launched by a catapult was utterly surreal. However, no one dared to look away.
“Form a spear wall!”
“Trust the ally next to you and never retreat!”
As expected of those from the Moyong Clan, the lineage of the Northern Great General, they skillfully rotated their vanguard and built a high spear wall in an instant.
However.
“Ha…!”
It was not only the Ironclad Fortress pulled by the two spiritual beasts that was rampaging.
“Do I look like a scarecrow just occupying the driver’s seat?!”
With a snort of derision—
Flash.
A sword draw and a strike in the same instant.
Would lightning look like this if it struck horizontally?
“……!”
The sharply erected spear wall was bisected by that single strike. In the moment the rebels felt an emptiness and checked their severed spear shafts—
Life-Stealing Ghost Sword Unique Sword Art.
Asura’s Five Skandha Extremities, One Soul Severing Life.
Crunch!
As the Life-Stealing Ghost Sword’s blade minced the surroundings, creating a sea of enemy blood, the rebels forming the spear wall crumbled like a sandcastle before a wave.
“Sword Corps!”
The squad leader of the spearmen, having lost all his subordinates in an instant, shouted like a scream.
“What on earth is our Sword Corps doing—?!”
His words could not reach their end.
“———!”
As the spiritual beasts spun in place, the Ironclad Fortress, its weight unfathomable, swept over him.
Squelch!
Over his corpse, crushed without even leaving a proper scream or form, the Sword Corps martial artists he had waited for so desperately descended.
[Create an opening with feints! Subdue the beasts first to bind their feet!]
No matter that he held swords in both hands, did the opponent not have only two hands?
“These bastards?!”
However, it didn’t take long for them to realize that judgment was wrong.
“Are you looking down on me?!”
Life-Stealing Ghost Sword Unique Sword Art.
Asura’s Five Skandha Extremities, Asura Sword Draw Stance.
“Controlling Sword with Qi…!”
“Watch out…!”
It was already too late.
The remaining three swords were fired in unison.
Was it the sword cry vibrating the heavens that rang first? Or was it the sword strike shaking the earth?
In an instant, the surroundings were shredded to pieces by a total of five swords: Form. Sensation. Perception. Impulse. Consciousness.
True to the name of the technique.
The form of an Asura with multiple arms drawing swords simultaneously!
“Kuek—!”
“Kuh!”
Amidst the scattering of severed arms, legs, and torsos, someone shouted his moniker like a scream.
“It-It’s the Life-Stealing Ghost Sword!”
“Ha…!”
A smile hung on the face of the Life-Stealing Ghost Sword, splattered with the bright red blood of his enemies.
“Have you finally recognized my identity?”
Over the corpses of their comrades, dozens of Sword Corps martial artists rushed in like arrows.
“Don’t give him distance!”
“Close in and block his vision!”
Clang-clang-clang-clang!
With a clamorous metallic sound, the Life-Stealing Ghost Sword, having parried over ten exchanges in a single breath atop the ox cart, sneered at them.
“Too late.”
“What…?!”
Realizing the meaning, the martial artists reflexively looked back.
“Charge!”
“Kill all the rebels!”
They could see Moyong Woonjeong’s forces pouring into the space created by the Life-Stealing Ghost Sword and the spiritual beasts.
“……!”
***
The forces of both sides tangled in the center of the inner fortress courtyard, compressing and pushing against each other violently.
“Push them out!”
Last Stand.
With the towering outer walls of the Moyong Clan behind them, the rebels resisted desperately as they had nowhere to retreat.
“Push them in!”
Those wishing to suppress the rebels and build a new Moyong Clan pushed in with equal desperation.
Amidst that fierce offensive and defensive battle, the gaze of Moyong Suryeon, the Head of the Reception Hall who had once led a Sword Corps herself, was fixed on one place.
‘That is…!’
At the very front of the friendly lines.
“Huryaaap!”
Five swords, invisible to the eye, were storming in all directions. Ankles, which no one could pay attention to in a group battle, were sliced away in droves. Swords popping out from the rear, where allies should have been, flashed as they pierced the backs of heads.
“Huaaaap!”
Every time he let out a shout, the entire front line advanced one step with him.
“Secure space for the Sword Formation!”
“Impossible!”
Even the Sword Corps was pressed from all sides in this situation, unable to display their skills properly.
“Euaaaap!”
One step.
“Heup!”
And another step.
The Life-Stealing Ghost Sword looked like a tireless giant, pushing the battle line alone.
‘So that is the Life-Stealing Ghost Sword…!’
In the past.
How often had she heard his name until her ears were worn out? As a martial artist living in the same era, how much had she been compared to him?
But seeing him in person today—
‘Those rumors were not exaggerated in the slightest…!’
It was a paradoxical story.
Sword Pinnacle Crushes the Mountain Yeom Gwak-chu, who rose to become a hero in the Northern War, was rather famous for one-on-one combat, having defeated Huashan’s Sword Sovereign.
Meanwhile, the Life-Stealing Ghost Sword, who made his name in the Southern Conquest of the Luoyang Sword Clan’s Great Supreme Retired Patriarch, was famous for mass battles.
Everyone here was now experiencing the reason why with their own bodies.
“Huryaaaaap!”
At that moment.
Swish!
There were those who ambushed the Life-Stealing Ghost Sword without a sound as he pushed the line up once more. They were the Captains (Dae-ju) of two Sword Corps.
Clang!
Just one finger joint.
The Life-Stealing Ghost Sword blocked the two swords of the Captains, which had nearly pierced his eyes, using the Controlling Sword with Qi.
“Oi.”
Between the crossed and trembling swords, the Life-Stealing Ghost Sword bared his teeth and smiled boldly at the Captains.
“Do you have no confidence without a surprise attack?”