Chapter 248
In the past. When I went into a cave expecting a fortuitous encounter and met the dying Ghost Shadow Thief,
I fought off the assassins who had pursued him and confirmed that Sal Valley had come completely under the Demonic Cult.
Even before regression, I did not know whether Sal Valley belonged to the Demonic Cult or not. From the start, Sal Valley was so secretive that such information was not widely known.
If there is one thing I do know… the King of Assassins was, before regression and even now, the only assassin to have reached the Flowering Stage, and the greatest assassin in the Central Plains.
And that he vanished from sight at the same time as the Demonic Cult’s invasion of the Central Plains.
In any case, since in this life Sal Valley had entered under the Demonic Cult, I figured we would clash sooner or later.
The problem is, I did not expect it to be today.
At the sight of the King of Assassins melting into the air and sliding out of view, a sigh escaped me.
“This is insane.”
If Sal Valley now belongs to the Demonic Cult, the only one who could send someone like the King of Assassins is the Heavenly Demon. After our prior face-to-face, I knew the Heavenly Demon would not sit and wait.
But I did not expect him to send the King of Assassins and have him join hands with the Baekak Mountain King, who has been especially inflamed with me lately.
I am sensitive by nature, and when it comes to killing intent, my Qi-sense is sharper still… yet now, no matter how I focus, scattering inner power and willpower, I cannot feel the King of Assassins’ presence.
To begin with, stealth arts are techniques that kill one’s signs, slipping outside the opponent’s perception.
You still see them with your eyes, but you take them for part of the natural background and pass them by, it is not some technique where they simply vanish while you are staring wide-eyed.
Well, I can more or less guess.
Trusting my instincts and the experience I have built up, I swung a strike. The sensation at my fingertips was of cutting not flesh or hem, but a membrane, and from the rift in the air the King of Assassins briefly showed himself.
Even if my sword bears willpower that cuts what cannot be cut, I cannot tamper with space itself.
I do not even understand what space is, do I. Swinging a sword without knowing what to cut is meaningless.
What I cut was a Qi membrane (gi-mak, a thin pocket of inner power usually used to keep sound from leaking).
So that was it.
If what I cut was a Qi membrane, there is only one reason the King of Assassins revealed himself from beyond it.
He is hiding not only his sound and signs, but even his appearance, with a Qi membrane.
The moment I realized that much, what I had to do was as good as decided.
Seo Mun-Hwarin, who had been fending off the Baekak Mountain King’s offense alone with slightly more difficulty than before, I shouted loudly to her.
“Senior Seo Mun-Hwarin! It seems you will have to handle that side alone!”
“What are you saying?! Then what do you intend to do!”
“Obviously, cut down the King of Assassins, who even now is lurking to take our heads.”
Saying that much, I stood still and focused my mind.
The odds are low… but not to the point of calling it impossible.
Whether because it was an extreme battle situation, or because the King of Assassins was a little careless, I had already pierced his stealth once.
If I can make that sensation completely mine… then I surely have a winning chance.
If I fail, I will be offering my neck, but that has always been the case.
Realizing the situation, the Baekak Mountain King, who had shifted his barrage from me wholly onto Seo Mun-Hwarin, let out a loud laugh.
“Hah-hah-hah! How laughable! You got lucky once by chance, and now you say you will counter the King of Assassins’ dagger! How do you even know whether that dagger will aim at you or someone else?!”
“Whether I win or lose, at least you will be dead for certain, so do not worry about that part.”
“You Bas…!”
Exploding with agitation, the Baekak Mountain King charged even more recklessly.
No, perhaps it was only an act. His Qi had amplified that much.
Of course, Seo Mun-Hwarin’s fists still held firm.
KWA-AANG!
Seo Mun-Hwarin blocked the Baekak Mountain King’s headlong charge head-on with a single fist.
Instead of one side’s Qi clearly shattering as before, it looked nearly even.
Both Seo Mun-Hwarin and the Baekak Mountain King’s brows twitched at once, as if the very fact that the other had received their full power displeased them.
In a tone sharper than usual, Seo Mun-Hwarin sneered.
“You bark savagely, but all you can do is run about to no purpose? To This One’s eyes, there is no telling you apart from a dog.”
“Do you know this? Dogs are a pack animal by nature. Green Forest men, hear me! Do not stand there gaping, go after opponents at your level!”
At the Baekak Mountain King’s shout, the Green Forest bandits who had been at a loss snapped to and began to rush at Seol Lihyang and the other Tang Clan warriors.
Stopping them would be far too simple for me as I am now.
But I could not move carelessly. The moment I moved to one side, the King of Assassins would swing his blade either toward the other side or at me, now comparatively unguarded.
It is natural that Seol Lihyang cannot respond to the King of Assassins’ blade. Her martial foundation is far too lacking.
The same goes for Seo Mun-Hwarin. Unlike me, she had not sensed the King of Assassins’ presence at all.
She could keep her life from his ambush, but she would be seriously wounded. If that happened, killing the Baekak Mountain King alone would become nigh impossible.
Perhaps guessing my situation, Seol Lihyang shouted in a calm voice.
“Cheon Hwi! Don’t worry about this side, leave it to me! I think I can make it work somehow!”
Right after, a clear singing voice rang out across the area. In an instant, a viscous cold like we were in the North Sea swept through.
A murderous blizzard that would turn anyone with insufficient inner power into a block of ice just by brushing them.
Most of the Green Forest men who had charged so boldly faltered and were stuck, unable to budge.
Even the rest, if they somehow pushed through Seol Lihyang’s cold, collapsed under the rain of hidden weapons and poisons that fell as if waiting.
Thanks to that, I could focus my mind solely on Qi-sense.
A clarity unlike ever before. Amid the hubbub I felt before and behind… no, precisely within that hubbub, a single point of discord that stood out.
There was a place where the flow of sound, which I had unconsciously learned by helping with Seol Lihyang’s training, was awkwardly distorted.
If the King of Assassins is using a Qi membrane like a tent to hide his signs and appearance, it must be there.
KWA-REUNG!
Like thunder, inner power burst from the soles of my feet. With the Thunderclap Steps at full force, the center of that discord rushed close in an instant.
I swung my white-dyed sword in a great sweep toward it.
Slice.
The feel at my fingertips of cleaving a Qi membrane. Beyond the fissure, the King of Assassins, still affectless but now showing a trace of surprise, was hurling hidden weapons in a sudden ambush.
“Hnng!”
His hidden-weapon skill was outstanding as befit an assassin, but on my side, have I not seen far greater hidden-weapon arts in the Tang Clan.
And how great could the power be in hidden weapons flung in a fluster.
TUNG! TUH-UNG! TUNG!
A few clashing sounds as Qi struck Qi. Most of the hidden weapons pinged off my blade as I swung to meet them, and some were stopped by my body-protecting Qi.
The King of Assassins, who had not said a word until now, muttered softly.
“How…?”
“You think I’d tell you?”
With a crooked grin, I kept swinging so as not to miss the moment.
With the White Sword fully unfurled, the strong blade is inefficient. What I need are only speed that surpasses the opponent and enough variety to deceive his eyes.
I focused on the subtlety of swiftness and change and recomposed my forms.
Acceleration from waist and shoulders, then elbows, branched into several streams through the wrists.
The White Sword, condensed to excess and shining far brighter than ordinary Qi, left afterimages in the air.
The complex paths etched into the eyes along those trajectories, an average opponent would have dropped his weapon long ago and offered his neck.
But the King of Assassins was no average opponent.
Cutting the Qi membrane let me see him clearly with the naked eye, but that was all.
His sign remained faint to the extreme, and where and how he was swinging his blade was still unclear.
Often enough, I would snap my sword back at the last moment because, before I knew it, a dagger had thrust right up to my nose.
In fact, my sleeve and forearm had been nicked lightly but repeatedly by his blade.
A strange sense that if my focus slipped even a little, I would lose the King of Assassins’ presence.
Wielding martial arts too high-grade to dismiss as merely an assassin’s, yet more assassin-like than any assassin.
Had my sword not been able to cut his Qi membrane, I would already be a corpse rolling on the ground.
While the King of Assassins and I, with focus pushed to the limit, each tried to read the other’s sword and exchanged moves seeing several steps ahead,
Seo Mun-Hwarin and the Baekak Mountain King clashed head-on again and again in a contest of strength that left nothing of the surroundings, and Seol Lihyang and the other warriors were in a melee so tangled it was hard to tell who was who against the Green Forest bandits.
If not our side, then at least Seol Lihyang’s side was almost certain to clean up the Green Forest by then.
The King of Assassins, who had been pressing close and thrusting in from blind angles with perplexing swordplay, abruptly retreated far back.
Though he barely moved his legs, he opened the distance that far. I did not even hear the sound of a push off the ground.
Thinking he meant to open space and then wrap himself again in a Qi membrane, I used the Thunderclap Steps to close fast.
“Where do you think you’re going!”
The moment the King of Assassins came back into sword’s reach, I carried my running speed into a stamped true step.
KUUNG!
The force I put in was tremendous, so the rebound was tremendous as well. Using minute movements of muscles and joints, I tuned it into a single direction.
Power concentrated in the arm. Inner power swirled as I poured excessive force into a single thrust.
“Ha-at!”
In accordance with a form of the Taesan Piercing Sword, my blade shot out straight. Rather than swing his blade in answer, the King of Assassins put a hand into his bosom. And then,
BUH-BOOM!
Gray smoke billowed high into the sky. The blade that should have gone through his heart veered wildly and churned the empty air.
“This is…”
A sensation as if my senses were twisting against my will.
I knew what that meant, which only made it all the more incomprehensible,
“Poison? And potent enough to work on me?”
My body, remade around Tang Sowol’s poisons, possessed a capability close to immunity to all poisons.
Strictly speaking, I have absolute immunity to poisons that Tang Sowol can wield, and if a poison is weaker than hers, my body can even devour it.
For me to be poisoned, not to the point of death, but enough to throw my senses into confusion.
The poison that entered shallowly through the cuts on my forearm must have been activated when I inhaled the smoke just now.
I knew assassins liked to use hidden weapons and poison, but I looked down on it somewhat, thinking it could not compare to the Tang Clan. I should not have.
If it is a poison of this level, it is certainly no ordinary toxin. Narrowing my eyes, I raised my guard another notch against the hidden weapons and poisons the King of Assassins used.
“This is why the Tang Clan lot…”
I saw the King of Assassins click his tongue as if in disbelief. From his perspective, it must have been quite a formidable poison.
Suppressing the toxic Qi with inner power, I recalibrated my sword’s measure to match my wavering senses. That was not so hard.
My senses still reeled, but my sword would not go wildly astray.
The problem is that my opponent is not a common martial artist, but the pinnacle of assassins.
Realizing my condition, he again refrained from swinging his blade and instead spread a Qi membrane, focusing on stealth once more.
He must be thinking that, with my senses dulled now, I will not be able to pierce his stealth as before. In fact, that was so.
Until now, I had held even or better against the King of Assassins only because I could break his stealth.
If I have to fight him without even knowing where he is… I will not last long.
So first, I buy time.
My judgment was quick, and I carried it out without hesitation.
I unraveled the condensed White Sword and swung wide.
At my will, a drawn-out cleaving slash stretched beyond the length of the blade and scored a great line across my vision.
KWAANG!
As if to separate me and Seo Mun-Hwarin from Seol Lihyang, a deep sword mark carved the ground. And it did not end there. This time, I leapt high and slashed wildly down toward the ground around us.
The terrain battered here and there and changed. At a glance, it looked like a desperate flail to catch the hidden King of Assassins by luck… but I had another aim.
KURR-REUNG!
The terrain had already collapsed here and there under the brutish battle between the Baekak Mountain King and Seo Mun-Hwarin.
When slashes of this scale were added, the ground began to give way with a thunderous roar.
At this, even the King of Assassins lurking nearby to take my head would surely be swept up.
Using the first slash I drew as a sort of boundary so she would not be caught in the landslide, I shouted to Seol Lihyang.
“Seol Lihyang! You lot, get down the mountain and flee for now! And…”
I gave a sheepish smile toward Seo Mun-Hwarin, who was hopping over debris in fright and even treading the air.
“Senior Seo Mun-Hwarin, come over here so you do not fall. And I must ask you to make it a bit more certain.”
“You truly…!?”
With an exasperated sigh, Seo Mun-Hwarin stopped what she was doing and, pushing herself a bit, headed my way.
The Baekak Mountain King spewed curses and fired Qi, and deciding it was not the time to stay hidden, the King of Assassins reappeared and threw hidden weapons,
but the drawn-out cleaving slashes that continued without regard for distance could bat them aside without issue.
The moment Seo Mun-Hwarin’s small hand seized my waist, with her other fist she slammed hard into the collapsing ground.
KWAANG!
Beyond merely flowing down, the earth dropped out. That should buy enough time.
All that remained was to survive safely through the landslide I had set off.
“But my condition is not normal right now, so I am asking you, Senior Seo Mun-Hwarin.”
“I will tell Tang Sowol everything later, so keep that in mind…!”
With a grim threat, Seo Mun-Hwarin hauled me close.