Chapter 258 : Vendetta (5)
Chapter 258: Vendetta (5)
Pat!
Il-mok charged straight at the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord with his sword slicing through the air.
"Kuk—"
The Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord barely managed to block that strike, letting out a strained grunt as he did. But before he could even catch his breath—
Whoosh!
—Il-mok had already pulled back his sword and launched into a rapid series of follow-up attacks.
The Soul-Stealing Heartless Sword wasn't some one-hit-kill martial arts. No, it was all about maintaining a continuous flow while maintaining a relentless pressure that never let up.
The sword path traced by the Ascension Sword flowed like water, one movement seamlessly bleeding into the next without pause.
But it wasn't like the Wudang Sect's Taiji Sword Art that moved without rest and resembled the path of rivers returning to the sea.
Speed (快), Fluidity (柔), Power (剛), and Variation (變).
A sword that launched with blinding speed would suddenly curve with gentle fluidity. A smoothly flowing blade would abruptly become aggressive and overbearing. A powerful strike would split into multiple feints, deceiving the enemy's eyes.
Even as the sword itself demonstrated the principle of Strength, the Sword Qi that shot out secretly carried the principle of Speed that targeted vital points. It was a dizzying mix of variations layered on top of each other.
It was a sword art that slowly suffocated the opponent without a single shred of mercy, ultimately driving them to give up everything.
A sword art named the Soul-Stealing Heartless Sword because the dazed faces of its victims looked as though their souls had been stolen.
Il-mok carved sword paths worthy of that name, pressing down on the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord with unrelenting pressure.
Screech!
The Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord barely managed to block or dodge Il-mok's strikes, rolling across the ground just to survive, constantly forced to retreat backward.
Yet, despite how thoroughly he was driving his opponent back, Il-mok's expression wasn't particularly bright.
It wasn't that he was growing impatient watching his enemy barely slip through his grasp time and time again.
True to the name Soul-Stealing Heartless Sword, he simply continued to press the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord with an indifferent expression, showing no emotion whatsoever.
After being pushed back with an increasingly desperate look on his face for quite some time, the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord's expression suddenly shifted completely.
Zing!
A clean yet blindingly fast and sharp strike pierced through the gaps in Il-mok's sword path.
Screech!
A chilling cutting sound rang out, and the martial robe near Il-mok's side was sliced clean off.
"Hmm."
When Il-mok narrowly dodged the prepared counterattack, the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord showed a peculiar reaction.
'So, he anticipated it.'
The Flying Dragon Pavilion Master’s retreat until now had been an act.
It wasn't meant to deceive his opponent, but merely to lure him into a battlefield of his own advantage.
Even at this very moment, Blood Qi was gathering toward the center of the altar that the jiangshi had blown apart.
Of course, with the central part of the altar destroyed and even the Third Elder dead, the gathered Blood Qi was just uselessly bleeding into the air.
The problem was that there were still pathways throughout the area where Blood Qi continued to flow.
And the Eighth Young Master of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult possessed a demonic sword capable of absorbing that Blood Qi, so fighting near those pathways would be tantamount to suicide.
That's why he'd deceived his opponent, pretending to be hopelessly pushed back while retreating. And yet, the bastard had still reacted to that surprise attack.
'He seems to have more practical combat experience than he lets on.'
Even as that thought crossed his mind, there was no sign of confusion or panic in the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord's eyes.
Now that he'd drawn his enemy to where he wanted him, he was sure he could finish the job.
***
'Tsk.'
Having dodged the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord's surprise attack, Il-mok clicked his tongue inwardly.
He'd noticed that bastard was putting on an act around the third time he'd swung his sword.
It was obvious. They'd fought on the same side before, so he knew how good this bastard was.
There was no way someone who was at minimum his equal, and probably even one or two levels ahead of him in skill, would be so helplessly pushed back.
And Il-mok hadn't found it difficult to deduce why the guy was putting on this act of being overwhelmed.
'It's because of the Ascension Sword.'
Still, there was a simple reason he'd kept up the chase and the barrage of attacks.
Letting him run away would only cause problems for Il-mok later.
No matter what, he had to stick to him like glue and finish him right here.
He'd pursued him because he'd judged he had a good enough chance of winning.
After all, while Il-mok had been topping up his power by absorbing Blood Qi with his sword, the other guy had to have burned through a ton of his own internal energy.
The second he dodged the ambush, Il-mok went right back on the attack with his blank face just like before.
It was a judgment based on the idea that even if his skill was one or two levels inferior, he could simply overwhelm his opponent with the vast difference in their internal energy reserves.
It seemed like the same pattern as before was repeating itself, but there was a major difference.
The Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord dropped the panicked act and now calmly blocked or dodged Il-mok's offensive with a cold expression.
Zing!
Every now and then, he'd slip a counter-attack through a gap in Il-mok’s defense, and each one was absolutely vicious.
Screech!
The Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord's sword aimed for Il-mok's face. Il-mok twisted his head aside, but a thin cut appeared on his cheek.
Only then did Il-mok realize there was one thing he'd overlooked.
'...His martial art revolves around minimal energy consumption and maximum attack.’
The Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord's movements were extremely concise.
It was a bit different from the principle of stillness conquering motion, where slowness overwhelms speed.
It was a style that cut out all the flashy stuff, leaving only a brutally fast and well-hidden killing sword.
The Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord showed no fear whatsoever as he dodged Il-mok's sword by paper-thin margins and occasionally launched counterattacks.
Since Il-mok never knew when a counterattack targeting his vital points might fly at him, he felt like his nerves were tensing up from the tension despite maintaining his offensive.
Zing!
He twisted away from another surprise counter, and more of his clothes were ripped.
Every time the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord's counterattack struck back, the flowing rhythm of Il-mok's sword would stutter.
And because of those jerky movements, another problem Il-mok had overlooked exploded to the surface.
The Blood Qi he'd absorbed through the Ascension Sword began to go berserk.
'Damn it.'
Il-mok grit his teeth as the coppery taste of blood rose in his throat, but a thin line of it still leaked from the corner of his mouth.
The Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord didn't miss it. A nasty smirk spread across his face.
"That's what you get for playing with filthy energy."
Instead of responding to the provocation, Il-mok swung his sword again.
He knew if he opened his mouth, he'd probably just spit up more blood.
Clang!
The Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord, who'd been conserving his internal energy and only launching occasional counterattacks until now, clashed swords directly with Il-mok, then suddenly switched to the offensive.
Now that he noticed his opponent's condition, there was no reason to let this opportunity pass.
Clang!
Il-mok blocked or dodged the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord's sword, barely holding on for several exchanges.
Just as the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord expected, the raging Blood Qi tearing through Il-mok's body was only getting worse.
Standing on the crossroads between life and death, Il-mok's mind furiously retraced his past, searching for a way to survive.
And one thing came to mind.
A solution that wasn't quite a solution.
'Can I do it?'
He first tried to gauge whether that solution was even feasible, but soon realized it was meaningless.
'Either I pull it off or I’m dead.’
With his mind made up, Il-mok seized control of the rampaging Blood Qi and forced it to change course.
Agony flared through every meridian in his body, but he pushed the twisted energy onward, channeling it all into the Ascension Sword.
VROOOMMM!
The Sword Qi coating the surface of the Ascension Sword split into fine fragments and spread out in all directions like threads of light.
It wasn't exactly the legendary Sword Threads.
Instead, the dozens of energy strands shot out like a spider's web, closing in on the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord.
It looked almost as if he was recreating Dam Bin's Dark Spider Blood Thread Art with Sword Qi.
And that's exactly what he was doing.
The crazy idea that had popped into his head was something he'd figured out while sparring with her.
One of martial artists’ ultimate goals on their journey in Martial Dao is to completely control the flow of their energy at will.
It was the path he needed to walk to achieve Transcendence from his Demonic Art, but he hadn't properly taken even a single step down that path yet.
And here he was, trying to take a massive leap forward when the Blood Qi was going berserk rather than under normal circumstances.
When a bundle of Sword Qi suddenly spread out from the Eighth Young Master's sword like a spider's web and flew toward him, the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord's eyes widened in shock for a second before he scrambled backward to dodge.
Screech!
A flurry of slicing sounds filled the air as the spot where he'd just been standing was torn to pieces.
"Tsk."
Il-mok clicked his tongue lightly in disappointment.
Unlike Dam Bin's Dark Spider Blood Thread Art, his didn't have real threads to guide it, so once he shot the energy out, he couldn't steer it anymore.
Swallowing his disappointment, Il-mok charged toward the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord and swung his sword.
But these weren't movements he'd learned while training in the Soul-Stealing Heartless Sword.
'Don't rely on familiar flows.'
Forget all the moves you've practiced a thousand times.
Forget the natural flow of energy you’d learned through the Soul-Stealing Heartless Sword.
Move your sword and draw the most splendid trajectory.
The Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord's face was colored with bewilderment at the suddenly transformed swordplay of the Heavenly Demon Cult's Eighth Young Master.
The sword technique he'd been using until just now had been full of changes too, but there had been a certain flow and pattern to it.
But this? This had nothing.
He looked like a lunatic in the throes of Qi Deviation, just flailing his sword around like a madman with no rhyme or reason.
But the shock lasted only a second. The seasoned Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord soon regained his composure and calmly dealt with the Eighth Young Master's new style.
He simply regarded it as his opponent's last desperate struggle.
Zing!
The Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord's collar was sliced off by a sword that came from an unexpected angle.
Zing!
The Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord dodged the bizarre attack and countered Il-mok with his own strike, causing blood to trickle from Il-mok's forearm.
Burning, searing pain rose from his forearm, but there was no change whatsoever in Il-mok's expression.
A searing heat spread from the cut on his arm, but Il-mok's face remained a blank slate.
It was nothing compared to the agony of wrestling with the berserk energy inside him.
No... at some point, Il-mok had stopped feeling even that pain.
Forget your techniques.
Forget your training.
Forget the pain.
Forget yourself.
Il-mok had fallen into a state of selflessness; nothing remained in Il-mok's mind except the sword.
'What the hell is this...?'
At some point during the fight, the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord found himself being pushed back again and his composure slowly vanished from his face.
Just then, bits of information from reports compiled by his subordinates surfaced in his mind.
—A genius who wielded Sword Qi at just sixteen and manifested Sword Force at seventeen.
—The greatest talent in the Demonic Path, surpassing even the current Heavenly Demon, Hyeokryeon Il-hwi.
At the time, he'd dismissed them all as ridiculous nonsense and yet...
'You've got to be kidding me... is he actually getting stronger as we fight?'
Only now did the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord realize it.
This young man fighting him is truly a genius unprecedented in the martial world.
And on top of that...
'If he's that waiter from back then... that means he got this strong in only three and a half years!'
As that sank in, the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord clenched his teeth with a resolute expression.
His objective had changed.
'I'll kill him right here, right now. Even if I have to die doing it.'
If a monster like that was allowed to grow, he could unleash a living hell on the Central Plain.
As the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord resolved to take Il-mok down with him...
Il-mok, who'd fallen into a state of selflessness, had reached his limit.
In a way, every single second was his limit.
The only reason he wasn't exploding was that for every bit wilder the energy got, the realm of his martial insight also leveled up.
His walk on the razor's edge between madness and enlightenment had finally hit a wall.
The blood energy was thrashing inside him, threatening to explode out of every opening in his body. In that moment of crisis, a bizarre technique came to Il-mok's mind.
With his mind completely fixated on the sword, Il-mok didn't hesitate for a second.
He forcibly led the rampaging blood energy from all over his body and guided it into the Ascension Sword, like the process in which a martial artist draws poison to a single point before expelling it to detoxify themselves.
When the rampaging Blood Qi was layered and then superimposed together, a Sword Force was formed on the Ascension Sword.
The bizarre Sword Force crackled with a repulsive force. It looked more like a sword formed from a bolt of lightning than the usual Sword Force.
A Sword Thunder (劍雷).
VRRRIIIING!!!
Maybe it was the strain, the Ascension Sword screamed as if it might explode at any moment.
Gazing at that terrifying ball of lightning, the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord charged without hesitation at Il-mok.
He wasn't trying to block or clash with that sword.
'I’m taking you with me.'
The Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord's sword brushed past the Eighth Young Master’s sword and headed toward the heart.
Right at that moment, Il-mok, who'd been forcibly controlling the Blood Qi, completely let go of his control over it.
CRACK!
A sound like something shattering pierced the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord's ears.
The aura that had been gathered on the Ascension Sword shattered into pieces, splitting into hundreds of fragments that spread out in all directions.
A banquet of Sword Force fragments filled the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord's vision.
'This can't... be.'
His body was riddled with dozens of holes, and the sword came to a halt right before Il-mok's heart.