Chapter 251
Seo Mun-Hwarin saw it.
The white heavenly thunder that stretched from the ground toward the sky, thus becoming a pillar that linked heaven and earth.
It was a fair distance away, but it was possible because the strike was that intense.
Even the Baekak Mountain King, who had been locked in a life-and-death battle with her, flinched for a moment and looked over, as did Seo Mun-Hwarin.
Everyone here knows. That is not real lightning, but merely the afterimage of gangqi.
Yet the heartscape contained within, the intense willpower, made them feel that simple afterimage as lightning.
It is fast and strong.
I do not speak of the subtleties of speed or force. To express it, a slightly different name is needed.
Yes. If one had to define it, Hegemonic Dominance.
A sword swung with one’s everything on the line, a sword that, if blocked, means the opponent is one you cannot defeat no matter what you do, so you do not think of what comes after. It may seem a demonic sort of resolve, but because one willingly stakes oneself upon a single sword, in essence it belongs to the Righteous.
Such an extreme yet pure resolve is of the same grain as that wielded by overlords in regions where Righteous and Demonic mingle.
For example, the Jeomchang Sect’s Sa-il Sword Art.
Or like the Seomun Clan’s Thunder Heaven Divine Art.
“Ah.”
What escaped Seo Mun-Hwarin’s lips was a single-syllable sigh, but in her mind countless words rose and vanished on repeat.
Truly... did he truly do it.
Even if it is not restoration, even if it is layering in his own way, even that was far off for This One...
From the moment I showed the Thunder Heaven Divine Art, I hoped for this, but this is too fast, far too fast.
Wait. Has he already killed the King of Assassins?
If so...
There were many things she wanted to say to Cheon Hwi, many things she wanted to ask, and she wanted to wildly praise him, saying he did well,
but before that, is there not something that should take priority right now.
On that side, which had grown still as if there would be no further battle. The white heavenly thunder wrought by Cheon Hwi could no longer be seen, but the sight was etched into her eyes.
Seo Mun-Hwarin had studied the Seomun Clan’s secret art for a long time, and had striven to reproduce it and infuse it into her own martial arts.
And to such a woman, a model answer had suddenly been thrust before her.
It did not take long for one who had wandered for so long to find an answer of her own.
“Damn it. Nothing ever goes my way.”
Having grasped the situation, the Baekak Mountain King began to turn and flee without a moment’s hesitation.
The King of Assassins was dead, Seo Mun-Hwarin seemed to have gained some enlightenment, and soon Cheon Hwi would be joining.
That he had no chance of victory had already been proven in the previous fight, so there was no reason to fret, no leeway to weigh this and that.
A swift and reasonable judgment.
Even after becoming a Flowering Stage martial artist, he strictly kept to striking the weak and fearing the strong, befitting his position as the overall chieftain of the Green Forest Bandits, yet, that alone was not enough.
As if bewitched by something, Seo Mun-Hwarin set her stance. Unlike usual, she put strength not into her fists but into her legs.
Seo Mun-Hwarin’s foot swept the ground in a semicircle once. And then,
Poook.
One foot dug into the ground up to the ankle. To brace something firmly.
Seo Mun-Hwarin’s body, which had been aiming at the Baekak Mountain King’s back that had gotten fairly far in the blink of an eye, began to move.
KRA-BOOM!
With a sound familiar to her, yet louder than ever before, Seo Mun-Hwarin’s form vanished.
“What the...!”
Seo Mun-Hwarin closed the distance that had opened. At that figure, as if the middle step had been omitted, the Baekak Mountain King’s mouth fell wide open.
The last scene engraved in his eyes, trembling finely with anxiety, was, a red lightning bolt crashing down toward his crown.
***
A trickle of blood ran from my nape. As the blood that flowed down soaked my collar, the King of Assassins’ bisected body rolled across the ground.
Hah!
My breath surged belatedly. The blood I shed was at most a couple of drops, yet my strength drained as if I had poured out all the blood in my body.
Concentration and willpower raised excessively high. Movements that were taxing even for a body that had undergone reincarnation and remolding. The chill that if I had been a little slower, my neck would have been cut.
And the realization that I overcame all this and finally toppled the King of Assassins.
So it works...
I knew it would. And I knew that so long as I executed it properly, I could win.
But why does it feel so dazed now that I have actually done it.
It must surely be because I went through too many things in far too short a time, leaving me blank for a moment.
However, it is not yet time to rest easy. Things ended here somehow, but Seo Mun-Hwarin should still be in the middle of fighting.
I shook my head hard to clear it and tightened my grip, which had loosened at some point.
crack.
Clutching a single sword, I headed to where Seo Mun-Hwarin was.
And I saw it.
Seo Mun-Hwarin, who burst out like red lightning and brought her fully raised leg crashing down.
PUH-UD!
The Baekak Mountain King’s head, as he fled, smashed outright, and his body, having lost its owner, collapsed limply.
“Hoh...”
Among Flowering Stage martial artists, the Baekak Mountain King is particularly sturdy. True to a Green Forest man, he had trained external arts to the extreme, and the more recklessly he fought, the thicker his protective gangqi became.
But his opponent was not favorable, and the situation was not favorable.
The leg art Seo Mun-Hwarin showed, astonishingly, is a figure within my memory.
Before regression. That is the past by my standard, but by Seo Mun-Hwarin’s standpoint, it is a form she only learns roughly seven or eight years from now.
It carries a large opening, but the power of that single strike brooks no comparison.
It is probably stronger than the single strike I swung to fell the King of Assassins.
Having taken head-on a leg art that you must absolutely avoid, for blocking is meaningless, it is no wonder the Baekak Mountain King’s crown became concave to the point of vanishing.
All the more when he had trained a martial art that grows stronger the more you fight, yet he had stopped fighting and was in flight.
It feels a bit empty, having struggled to run all the way here only for it to already be over.
“By the way, have you already gotten the feel for it.”
The strike that killed the Baekak Mountain King is a form that the far more seasoned and skillful Seo Mun-Hwarin before regression unhesitatingly called her clan’s peerless secret.
I only saw it a few times, but I remember even martial artists of the same Flowering Stage recoiling in fright each time she executed it.
Thanks to that, aside from Sangwan Geuk, the Lord of the Black Lotus Sect, there were no other Flowering Stage martial artists of the Black Lotus who showed interest in Ironblood Hall.
Yet to think she would learn such a form this quickly.
As for me, I am gifted in this direction and even had a model answer to reference, but Seo Mun-Hwarin did not, did she.
Or did she. Could she have gotten a clue from watching the sword I executed just before?
Even after pondering, no sharp answer came.
If you do not know, is it not enough to simply ask.
Ordinarily, prying into another’s martial arts and enlightenment like this is quite rude, but we have already restored the Thunder Heaven Divine Art together and succeeded in unfolding its subtleties in our own ways.
A question of this degree should be within bounds.
As I nodded and sheathed my sword, my gaze met Seo Mun-Hwarin’s, who had been staring blankly down at the Baekak Mountain King’s corpse.
Mm. I know that feeling well. I myself was feeling it just now, how could I not know.
I curled my lips into a crooked grin and waved to Seo Mun-Hwarin.
“I was faster, Senior Seo Mun-Hwarin.”
“You!”
Perhaps my gesture snapped her out of it, for Seo Mun-Hwarin called out to me and toddled over.
No. She was indeed toddling over, but before I knew it, it turned into a rapid patter. In other words, she had started to sprint at near full speed instead of slowing down.
“F, first calm yourself, Senior Seo Mun-Hwarin. I understand you are happy, but...”
“You...!”
Far from slowing down, Seo Mun-Hwarin now poured inner energy into her run. Before I could finish speaking, she arrived right in front of me and leaped.
A grotesque posture with arms and legs flung wide in midair. Like a flying squirrel, and I could not help admiring it for a moment.
Thud!
With a rather savage collision sound, Seo Mun-Hwarin hugged my face with her whole body from midair.
Arms hugging so tightly it suffocated me. Her legs constricted my upper body like a snake eyeing prey, and with her soft cheeks she pressed my head down firmly.
A figure who, to anyone’s eyes, seemed unable to contain her emotions and was bouncing about.
Seo Mun-Hwarin crashing into me with such favor is something I am grateful for and pleased by, in any case it is certainly a good thing.
So much so that Tang Sowol, who dotes on Seo Mun-Hwarin like a younger sister despite her being well over twice her age, would have been a little jealous.
However, there is one serious problem here.
Unlike Tang Sowol, Seo Mun-Hwarin’s chest is, how to put it... a little lacking in shock absorption.
To put it more plainly, it is not very plush.
In other words.
If you collide at this speed, it hurts. A lot.
“You! Did you see it?! Thanks to you, the Thunder Heaven Divine Art, the Seomun Clan’s secret art will soon see the light again!”
“Mm...”
“It is still far from a complete restoration of the Thunder Heaven Divine Art, but thanks to you I could grasp the core principle, so it is only a matter of time!”
“I appreciate the evaluation, however...”
“Ah! I did not know such a day would come! This One, This One truly believed I would be alone without fail, and that I would have to toil for ten more years to complete the foundation for rebuilding the Seomun Clan!”
“Would you please let go for a moment.”
“Thanks to you, it is no exaggeration to say that This One’s life has changed... hm? Let go, you say. Do not suddenly say such a saddening thing. Will you not rejoice with me a little longer? Is this not the achievement you and This One accomplished together.”
“That is true, but.”
A bit of embarrassment. And considering Seo Mun-Hwarin, who would be even more embarrassed than I, I continued as gently as I could.
“I overexerted myself, so I have a nosebleed. I worry that Senior Seo Mun-Hwarin’s clothes will get dirty.”
“Ah...”
Though I had gone out of my way to put it roundabout, at times like this she understood perfectly.
In the saddest voice in the world, she let go of my head she had been hugging.
“I am sorry... let us stop the bleeding first...”
“Yes...?”
All the positive air that had been overflowing just moments ago, joy, pride, gratitude and so on, disappeared somewhere, and what remained was only Seo Mun-Hwarin looking down at her own chest with a gloomy expression.
Even though we had won against opponents as hard to meet, and even harder to topple, as the overall chieftain of the Green Forest Bandits and the King of Assassins, is this not too dreary a mood.
So, to shift the mood, I patted Seo Mun-Hwarin’s shoulder as brightly as I could.
“Your ribs are remarkably sturdy.”
“Be silent.”
I was scolded.
Why though...
Although for a trifling reason Seo Mun-Hwarin’s mood had dipped a little, in any case, if you won a fight there is something you should of course do after.
Rifling the bodies.
If it is the likes of the Baekak Mountain King and the King of Assassins, might we not learn some important information. It is a bit unseemly, but necessary.
Thus, I found the Heavenly Demon’s letter on the King of Assassins’ person.