Chapter 247
“I see. So you’re that brat they call the White Moon Sword Lord who’s been all the rage lately.”
“My, my. Then you’ll go down as the first Grand Stockade Master in Green Forest history to get done in by a brat.”
I shot back on reflex, but my head was a mess.
Why did that bastard come looking for us here...?
The Green Forest’s Grand Stockade Master, Baekak Mountain King. Even among Flowering Stage warriors, he’s an odd one in many ways.
He’s the one who set the Green Forest’s policy of running the moment things turn the least bit unfavorable, and the one who most zealously puts it into practice.
But we must not forget that, for whatever reason, he’s survived unscathed for over a dozen years despite all the villainy he’s committed.
Whatever the case, no one can deny he’s an extremely seasoned warrior.
Which is precisely why this makes even less sense.
Judging by how he’s surrounded us with other Green Forest bandits, he clearly tracked us down on purpose. We have two Flowering Stage fighters on this side. I alone may be weaker than the Baekak Mountain King, but with Seo Mun-Hwarin alongside me, the story changes.
Certain defeat. Even if he had strength on par with the Murim Alliance Leader, rumored to rank among the top three in the current martial world while hiding it as he ran, he’d still take serious wounds.
The damage we’ve dealt the Green Forest so far is considerable, but not to the point they’d accept that level of risk.
Yet the Baekak Mountain King has shown himself and encircled us like this.
Aiming my sword and fixing my gaze on the Baekak Mountain King, I quickly sent sound transmissions to Seol Lihyang and Seo Mun-Hwarin.
“No matter how angry he is, the fact that he showed himself means he has some move prepared.”
“This One thinks so as well. I do not know what he has prepared, but at least in his mind, it must be enough to ensure victory against two Flowering Stage warriors.”
“I do not know if I can handle it, but I’ll be careful.”
At Seol Lihyang’s taut voice, I gave a small nod and stepped forward.
“While I was busy catching bandit scum, I didn’t expect the bandit boss to stick his own neck out. Let me ask first, did you come to surrender?”
“Ha! As if. I came to teach the riffraff who dared lay hands on my men the terror of the mountain!”
With that, he slammed the haft of the axe he was holding into the ground.
KWAANG!
With a thunderous boom, the ground cracked in a spiderweb. The shock that rolled out half a beat later shook the earth’s frame, and those behind me staggered for an instant.
The Green Forest rabble are just as lacking in martial foundation, but the fact that only the Tang Clan warriors lost their stance must mean, surprisingly, that in that brute show of strength he laced in exquisite control.
Of course, it’s far too early to gloat over seizing the initiative with just that much.
“Noisy.”
I knit my brow and overlay killing intent onto the Qi-sense I’d spread wide.
I may no longer cling to killing intent, but that doesn’t mean all the experience I’ve had handling it has vanished.
Now that I can wield willpower freely, my killing intent, made all the more intense, densely fills the entire reach of my Qi-sense.
Ghk…
Hughk!
A, ah…
Most of the Green Forest bandits encircling us turn deathly pale.
Some clutch at their throats, some tremble silently, and some already go weak at the knees and collapse.
No exceptions. Exposed to my killing intent, the sharpened sense of death makes them drop their weapons.
Only those who covet, or the one who has already surpassed, the supreme realm called the Flowering Stage are not neutralized by my killing intent.
The result puts the earth-tremor he made by stomping with his axe to shame. And this isn’t the end.
“Baekak Mountain King. I do not know what possessed you to so brazenly stand before This One, but… did This One look so laughable to you?”
Like the Grand Stockade Master had done with his axe, Seo Mun-Hwarin stomped the ground hard with her foot.
KUUNG!
A shock rippled out from where Seo Mun-Hwarin set her foot.
As before, the ground for a wide area shook. This time, to all sides except our own,
Those who already couldn’t gather their wits after exposure to my killing intent failed to keep their balance under the tremor Seo Mun-Hwarin raised and toppled one by one.
Most of the subordinates the Baekak Mountain King had swaggered in with ended up sprawled disgracefully on the ground.
Even for a Flowering Stage warrior, this sort of thing doesn’t happen without laying a hand on them. This phenomenon stems entirely from my peculiarity.
Of course, they probably had no intention of truly doing anything to me or Seo Mun-Hwarin, at best planning to pressure my party.
Even so, whatever his original reason, the Baekak Mountain King flinched, as if he hadn’t foreseen this situation.
His features twisted into a vicious scowl.
“Seems you’ve got a trick or two, but in the battles of kings, such trifles mean nothing.”
“Battles of kings? I don’t see anyone of such grand station here.”
“What do you mean, no? I’m a Mountain King, and you’re a Sword Lord. If the two of us fight here, what is that if not a battle of kings?”
“So acting like a king on a mountain really has driven you mad.”
As a courtesy, we often attach epithets containing “king” or similar words to Flowering Stage warriors.
But it’s merely convention, a mark of respect that they’re that great as a warrior, not something anyone truly believes makes them a king.
If anyone does… there’s a high chance he’s not right in the head.
But regardless of what I said, or that his subordinates were still strewn on the ground gasping, the Baekak Mountain King showed unbroken fury.
He yanked the massive double-headed axe from where it was stuck in the ground and hefted it onto his shoulder.
He adopted an extreme stance, shouldering a weapon as big as his body and leaning forward.
The posture was new to me, but that extreme bullheadedness was a common trait I’d seen in other Green Forest techniques I’d faced.
A thick, dusky blue Qi coated the Baekak Mountain King’s whole body and axe. And in the next instant,
TUNG!
With a somewhat peculiar sound for a mere push off the ground, his hulking frame closed fast.
I also charged to meet him and swung my sword, while Seo Mun-Hwarin swung around to his flank and drove a fist, as if to support me.
In response, the Baekak Mountain King briefly hunched, then, extending his arms from that very posture, answered by spinning.
It was like a giant axe had suddenly sprung out.
Wreathed in vivid qi, the hefty axe swept horizontally, cleaving the air.
It carried the momentum to split anything it met like kindling… but the willpower imbued in my and Seo Mun-Hwarin’s Qi was in no way inferior.
KWAANG!
A tremendous roar exploded as my blade met the axe’s edge.
Though my mastery and the time were insufficient to transform it into the White Sword, the densely condensed white Qi bored into the dusky blue Qi coating the axe.
But my sword body was driven back before cutting even halfway through.
It wasn’t deflected or its path bent. It was simply shoved toward me, like failing to stop a boar’s charge head-on for lack of strength.
I see. So this is what a Green Forest art feels like when it reaches the realm.
At this rate, I’d end up cutting myself with my own sword. I calmly twisted out of the line, and at the same time, Seo Mun-Hwarin’s fist struck the Baekak Mountain King’s flank.
BUH-BOOM!
Crimson-dark Qi slammed in with ferocious force to pierce his dusky blue body-protecting qi.
The sound was closer to an explosion than a strike. From Seo Mun-Hwarin’s single punch, the thick protective Qi cracked.
The Baekak Mountain King’s expression twisted slightly, and so did Seo Mun-Hwarin’s.
She must have been incredulous that a blow meant to smash through any body-protecting Qi had been blocked.
Conversely, the Baekak Mountain King seemed startled that he’d taken this much damage mid-charge.
Of course, neither surprise lasted. We still had an opponent before us to bring down.
BANG! KWAANG! BANG!
Trusting in his body-protecting qi, the Baekak Mountain King charged like an enraged boar, swinging the heavy axe without pause.
With each sweep of his axe, the ground was overturned, ancient trees that had stood for ages split in two, and even rocks that seemed eternal shattered to pieces.
Each time the slightly belated White Sword met that axe, it hewed deep into the dusky blue Qi.
Along with Qi that should have been impossible to cut, it shaved away the Baekak Mountain King’s brutish momentum.
But unable to fully absorb the shock transmitted whenever our weapons met, I was forced a step back with each exchange.
Worse, the impact I felt in my hands grew with each of the Baekak Mountain King’s blows.
It must be a martial art that grows in power the more the offense is pressed.
Before I could fully cut through his qi, I’d be swept up by his axe after being shoved back.
Had I been alone, that’s how it would’ve gone.
Hhng!
Seo Mun-Hwarin’s fists kept lancing toward the Baekak Mountain King.
Sometimes he received them with only his body-protecting qi, sometimes he blocked with the axe haft.
His Qi grew harder and heavier as he kept pressing the offensive, but Seo Mun-Hwarin’s fists were anything but ordinary.
Crackle-crack.
They broke faster under her fists than the rate at which his headlong charge translated into power.
That didn’t mean the Baekak Mountain King was an easy opponent. The aftershocks of our exchanges alone were reshaping the terrain in real time.
A battle into which not only the Green Forest rabble who’d come to their senses late, but even the Tang Clan warriors who’d been following me until now, couldn’t dream of intervening.
Seol Lihyang alone kept her eyes wide and continued her song, focusing her inner power toward the Baekak Mountain King.
No matter how pure and refined the cold, it wasn’t easy to hold form amid densely packed Qi clashing again and again.
Silvery ice crystals gathered and scattered, over and over.
But it wasn’t without meaning. It was more than enough to disrupt the Baekak Mountain King’s focus here and there.
He wasn’t easy to face, but with each exchanged move we solidified our advantage, and now, with a single stroke, I could slice through the Baekak Mountain King’s body-protecting Qi and drive my sword into his nape.
At the moment when Seo Mun-Hwarin and I hauled the vague sense of victory into certainty, the corner of the Baekak Mountain King’s mouth twitched, when he should have been seeing his own death.
It could have been a simple spasm. He was still collapsing even as he went on the offensive, so perhaps it was my imagination.
Yet, for some reason, it felt like a smile to my eyes.
A warning bell of instinct rang. Trusting it, instead of finishing the cut through more than half his Qi, I twisted my body aside to evade.
“You?!”
Seo Mun-Hwarin raised her voice at the choice that wasted all the effort we’d put in until now.
Overlaying willpower itself beyond killing intent, my Qi-sense grew even keener. I swung my white-hot sword toward the faint discord I felt at its fringes.
JJEONG!
A small dagger pinged off my blade, and peculiarly, a translucent Qi was sheathing it.
Why did I only now realize such blatant killing intent?
Keeping my guard up at a situation I couldn’t understand myself, I swung again.
Toward someone neither seen nor sensed, the one who held that dagger.
Slice.
A sensation like cutting something thin. But it felt more like slicing a barrier of Qi than clothes or flesh.
The sword path left in the air became a fissure that soon spat out a person from within.
A hazy impression. His features were utterly ordinary, and even though I was plainly looking at him, I couldn’t readily be sure of his existence, like a ghost.
As those who favor concealment and ambush often do, the man before me wasn’t wrapped in obvious black clothes.
From his shabby outfit and well-honed yet worn dagger, one felt nothing extraordinary.
But those eyes. So utterly affectless they felt like they were regarding a corpse, and instinctively, I knew.
No way?
There was no answer, but none could have been more certain than this.
The master of Sal Valley, the pinnacle of assassins, said to have no one in the Central Plains he cannot kill.
And now, one who has come under the Demonic Cult, under the Heavenly Demon, and the card the Baekak Mountain King was counting on.
The King of Assassins withdrew his dagger and took a step back.
At the same time, his translucent inner power wrapped his whole body, and before I knew it, his figure was gone without a trace.
By luck, we managed to thwart his attempt to assassinate us at the most decisive moment, when we were off guard.
Now, all we had to do was deal with the fatal unseen, unfelt blade along with the Baekak Mountain King.
“This is insane.”
I knew the Heavenly Demon wouldn’t sit still and wait.
But I didn’t expect this method.