Chapter 243 - Opening the Eyes (7)

The mountains lay silent.

A breeze swept through the undergrowth. Here, amid the towering peaks of the gorge, stood an unusually gentle hill. Green blades of grass stretched every which way, swaying softly. Even with winter's breath upon them, they had not lost their color.

"..."

They had posted so many notices. They had made certain everyone knew.

—The group that subdued the seven great sects had picked a fight with the Tyrant Sword Tribe.

These were no ordinary notices. They targeted the Tyrant Sword Tribe Elder Council Leader specifically. The smoothly worded yet utterly unrestrained references to her parents left readers gaping. Some hurriedly turned away.

All manner of comments circulated everywhere. Most amounted to saying that the challengers had lost all sense of fear.

The Heaven Beyond Heaven.

That was what people called the highest powers of the martial world, including the Tyrant Sword Tribe. A heaven beyond the heavens.

No one dared so much as touch the notices. The entire metropolis of Xi'an was in an uproar, and countless curious eyes had followed the commotion to this peak.

"So he's the one who swept away the seven sect leaders in one stroke."

"The Ghost-Soul Divine Sword isn't even human. How does he expect to handle her?"

Spectators were everywhere.

Every peak teemed with concealed presences, like soldiers lying in ambush. All sorts of people hid among thick pine needles, their color dulled and rusted.

This was different even from the destruction of the seven great sects. Martial artists streamed in from every quarter, hoping that merely witnessing the encounter might prove a fortuitous opportunity, eager to see Yeo Sohyang in person—the woman once renowned alongside the Zhongnan Sword Immortal as an immortal of the sword...

After all, one could go an entire lifetime without seeing such a transcendent martial artist strike.

"There! Up there!"

"Woooo!"

The moment a black speck appeared overhead, even a few cheers rang out. Those cheering had never suffered exploitation at the hands of the evil and unorthodox paths.

At last, the imperious immortal was descending. Every eye turned skyward.

WHOOOOOSH!

The sound of something cleaving the air grew louder, like the wailing of ghosts. It was as though a divine general were descending from the celestial realm.

Even the sound plunging down from those distant heights was overwhelming.

'What a racket.'

Standing alone on the hill, Jung Yeonshin spun the radiant wheel in his heart. Energy stirred at his wrists, and his black sleeves billowed wide.

SWISH!

Silver threads streamed from both hands. Fine sensations brushed his wrists as the threads wound around Korean pines within a ten-jang radius.

These were the thread swords he had claimed as spoils, dozens of strands intertwining and pulling taut. It looked as though he had fashioned a seven-string zither out of nature itself.

The captain of the Radiant Demon Squad leaped gracefully up and landed on a golden strand. A curious resonance spread beneath his feet.

DING...

It was the working of internal energy. Laden with radiant wheel qi, each strand of the thread swords resonated. A deep, crystalline note filled the woods.

One by one, the eyes fixed on the sky lowered toward Jung Yeonshin. Untroubled by the sunlight, he raised his head.

He had no awareness that he was creating a scene of rare mystery. He simply took in what lay before him.

He could see it.

Someone descending through the air atop a treasured sword.

She was an old woman whose ears tapered like sword points. Her very presence was unbelievably sharp.

Destructive, colorless sword qi enveloped her body. The energy pouring from her was enough to make the air groan. A constant hissing reached him, like snakes crying out. He could understand how she had earned the name Ghost-Soul.

Though her empty left sleeve fluttered in the wind, her presence remained steadfast. None of the distorted balance peculiar to one-armed swordsmen was evident.

Her martial might should have diminished after the Zhongnan Sword Immortal severed the entire Hand Yangming Large Intestine Meridian in her left arm.

She lived up to the Tyrant Sword Tribe's name. It was as though her entire body had become a divine sword.

"Child. Those words."

Still standing on her sword, the old woman moved her wrinkled lips.

"Did you write them?"

She did not descend all the way. She remained some three jang above him, her perch on the sword resembling a throne.

With her hand behind her back, she looked down on Jung Yeonshin with the bearing of long experience—and the arrogance accumulated over just as many years.

Jung Yeonshin knew instinctively that she had once reached the realm of a purple robe.

Nothing else made sense. Even her supposedly declining martial arts felt overwhelming.

The sword qi rising from Yeo Sohyang's body naturally reached even the air Jung Yeonshin breathed. It rippled with terrible sharpness, ceaselessly pricking the protective force qi around his face from the moment she descended.

"They were written as I dictated. Wasn't every last word true?"

He answered offhandedly, without much hope. The eye techniques of noble-race martial artists excelled at discerning truth.

Chung Myung was proof enough. The Tyrant Sword Tribe Elder Council Leader would be no different. What bothered him was that Heon Wonchang had put his own alias on the notices exactly as it was.

Anger entered the eyes of Yeo Sohyang, the Ghost-Soul Divine Sword.

"A lie. However..."

Suddenly, the sword beneath her feet shot upward like a ray of light and settled into her hand. A flying sword.

Someone who flew on a sword could hardly be incapable of controlling it with qi.

Even holding it in one hand, she floated steadily, as though her center of gravity had shifted to the hilt. Suspended elegantly from the sword, Yeo Sohyang's lips trembled.

"You assuredly bear responsibility as well."

In an instant, the wave of force concentrated in her sword formed another blade around it.

HUMMMMM!

The treasured sword in her wrinkled hand sang fiercely. Together with the enormous, formless blade that had sprung into being, it swept down to one side—toward another peak, where the spectators were massed.

Jung Yeonshin knew instinctively that one of the three supreme secret techniques Zhuge Hyeon had described was manifesting.

Sword Art of Loyalty to Duan and Wasteland Sundering—Thunder Shatter.

The air ahead warped.

KRAAAAAASH!

Yeo Sohyang's wave of force, compressed into the shape of a sword, exploded outward. A straight-line slash. The path it carved through the air shimmered colorlessly before striking the peak midway up.

Rock grated and sheared off its surface. At the same time, a vast, invisible ripple surged outward.

In that instant, the entire peak—with hundreds of people on it—was severed. Thick clouds of dust rose, their texture almost unreal.

The enormous severed mass began sliding downward and sideways. Boulders fell amid showers of rubble.

RUMMMMMBLE!

Screams erupted everywhere, voices of every kind ringing with horror and fear. The cries seemed wrung from people's throats.

There was no resisting it. It was more akin to a natural disaster.

People clawed at the undergrowth before tumbling over the cliff in droves. Those who clung to tree trunks fell with the severed peak.

Pandemonium. A heavy crash sounded from the distant ground. A single sword stroke had upended the lives of countless people.

The attack had come in a split second. Truly, it had been like a ray of light.

"They must have come flocking here in delight at those scraps of paper insulting the Tribe Lord. Vermin unworthy even of being called jackals."

Yeo Sohyang's aged voice was calm and quiet.

Just before she unleashed the slash, the thread swords Jung Yeonshin sent out had skimmed beneath her feet. It had been an exquisite evasion: she had risen farther in midair in that brief interval.

The treasured sword in her grasp returned beneath her feet. The sight was profoundly mysterious.

"First, I shall behead all those wretches. As for your execution, child..."

She stood loftily on the flat of her sword, looking down at Jung Yeonshin with cold eyes.

It was the gaze of an old master who had spent long years in an exalted position. Even the slow parting of her lips carried weight.

"That will come slowly. Very slowly indeed."

"Shut up, you old scum."

Jung Yeonshin swiftly swept his surroundings with his energy detection.

His Radiant Demon Squad comrades, dispersed as scouts, had been tasked with identifying powerful martial artists in case the Tyrant Sword Tribe's elite forces arrived. Only Radiant Demon Team One, wiji myohwa, Zhuge Hyeon, the Supreme Flame Dragon, and a few others waited nearby in disguise.

Fortunately, the sword strike had missed them. They had concealed themselves on other peaks.

'No.'

Fortunately? Not at all.

Jung Yeonshin had witnessed a massacre.

Ordinary people and martial artists had been swept away together. And not a small number. Yeo Sohyang had killed well over a hundred people, using sword-riding flight to stay far beyond the reach of the Radiant Demon Squad captain's attack.

WHOOOOOSH!

She was doing it even now.

Yeo Sohyang rode her sword far away, seemingly toward the opposite peak. She had already been beyond the range of all his forms; now she was practically moving into another space entirely.

This was nothing like the behavior Zhuge Hyeon had described.

She was practically a lunatic. The Tyrant Sword Tribe Elder Council Leader was mad.

With sword strokes so swift that even Jung Yeonshin could not properly catch them, she had turned a slash rarely seen under heaven against common people. Chaos had already engulfed the surroundings.

Crowds poured down from every direction in an unexpected evacuation. Here and there among the ordinary people covering their heads with both hands, he could see his Radiant Demon Squad comrades wearing bewildered expressions.

'I have to stop her.'

Jung Yeonshin's eyes hardened.

Fury rose in his chest, searing through the heart that housed his radiant wheel.

Killing moves must never be wielded so lightly. The lives of ordinary people should remain outside the martial world's conflicts.

Jung Yeonshin had wielded his sword to obtain the Fruit of the World Tree, all to preserve the single thread of his own life.

But how many threads were being snuffed out on the opposite cliff now? Each one must carry the same weight as his own.

RUMMMMMBLE!

Another peak was severed diagonally and fell. It was somewhere he could not reach from here.

'Can I handle her?'

Jung Yeonshin's gaze settled.

He and Zhuge Hyeon had carefully estimated Yeo Sohyang's full strength. Her left arm had been severed during the battle between sects at Zhongnan. Her tyrant force weakened by the day, and age had carried her skills farther and farther from their prime... They had assumed she would not be as formidable as her reputation suggested.

But facing her in person was different. That was how it felt.

He had not properly seen her strike. A tyrant sword. It was truly a sword that sought supremacy among the evil and unorthodox paths. The gathering and release of her internal power, and the launching of her sword strikes, were astonishingly fast.

Her sword force was monstrously powerful as well. Enough to remind him of Xiahou Weizhen, the Thousand-Fist, Dragon-Strength Retainer.

Her reputation had spread throughout the vast world for a reason. She was a transcendent swordswoman who could shear through mountain peaks, a master known in every province of the sprawling Central Plains.

Even if the Dharma-Surpassing Radiant Wheel Art had an advantage against her arts, it was as good as useless if he could not read her attacks. As he was now, he could not win.

Soon, all his thoughts converged into a single line.

'I'll have to complete it here.'

Quickly. Now.

He would use the time the arrogant Tyrant Sword Tribe Elder Council Leader had handed him herself.

'The eye technique...'

Jung Yeonshin's innate gift responded. It was a talent nourished by his lifespan. Whenever he truly needed it, it had answered ferociously.

He felt he could do it now. The wind brushing his skin felt different. A crisp sense of omnipotence—a familiar yet curious sensation.

Just before he closed his eyes, a sky-blue gleam passed through his pupils.

He drew a breath.

With that inhalation, his consciousness sank inward. He went deep, looking back on everything he had seen.

At the Alliance, he had broadened his experience through the Comprehensive Compendium for Breaking the Righteous Path and encountered the cultivated body of Baek Seogun, the Sky-Swimming Sword Demon.

Upon returning to the fortress, he had exchanged knowledge with the senior captains. The world of martial learning was truly vast. He had felt firsthand just how many ways there were to use the body, and Senior Jin, the Blood-Preserving Squad Captain, had been especially helpful.

He had also contemplated his maternal grandfather Ma Yeonjeok's body while restoring his youth. He had compared it to the body of the reigning Divine Sword Squad Leader, which he had examined when he was a blue robe. He had traced the flows of qi and blood created by peerless masters whose heights were difficult to approach.

All of it was insight.

Now, Jung Yeonshin's knowledge was sufficiently broad and deep.

'Let's establish the mental image that will form the axis of this martial art.'

The intent to absorb all of it into his sight like lightning—and then read it completely.

THUMP...

In this extreme situation, Yeo Sohyang's sword strikes and his present feelings intertwined into inspiration.

A stimulus honed to a blue-sharp edge hammered at his crown. In his heart, a wheel of light spun.

'I have to stop that old woman. Unless I shatter every one of her sword strikes completely, winning will be no different from losing. I don't need an all-around field of vision. I want an eye technique that gives me absolute command over what's directly before my eyes. One whose power to neutralize reaches even masters a level above me.'

The eyes of the Radiant Demon Squad captain, protector of the people's lives throughout the world.

The Dharma-Surpassing Radiant Wheel Art began rising toward his head. Warm internal power filled the surrounding minor meridians.

From his face to his eyes, the Sibai, Zanzhu, and Yintang points grew hot with internal energy. Exceedingly dense waves of qi spread from his face—a flow weaving his nervous system anew.

HUMMMMM!

Streams of blue energy began spilling through the gaps between his eyelids.

He had long since constructed the core-energy structure and the like in formulas. All he needed was to define the martial art's contours clearly.

He worked the insights floating through his mental image into the formulas. His innate talent turned to light within his head and raced through his entire body.

The current captain of the Radiant Demon Squad was a Grandmaster. Freely shaping the formulas and intent that had fused in an instant, he brought an unprecedented eye technique into bloom.

With the mental image of trampling troublesome wretches before they could offend his eyes.

'I'll name this the Art of Revealing the Base... '

His entire eyes grew hot. Every flow connected to the Baihui point at his crown.

'And make it the eyes through which I see the world.'

Waves of radiant wheel qi surged into his head.

A complete convergence.

A flash!

The upper dantian in his brain blazed blue.

His crown seethed as though lightning had pierced it. Amid blue electrical light, a free and unimpeded flow took shape.

With a fixed structure of internal power, it traveled ceaselessly through the minor meridians between his optic nerves and Baihui point. In that instant, without warning, a peerless eye technique was born.

Jung Yeonshin immediately opened his eyes.

Then he spoke.

"The Tyrant Sword Tribe Lord mercilessly cut down my father. He must never have received a proper upbringing from his parents. Perhaps his nursemaid's teaching was simply abysmal."

Laden with radiant wheel qi, his words rang out in every direction.

He had borrowed Heon Wonchang's method, and it certainly worked.

WHOOOOSH!

A sudden gale sent Jung Yeonshin's long hair flying into disarray. Yeo Sohyang, the Ghost-Soul Divine Sword, had returned in an instant atop her sword. The speed of sword-riding flight was truly terrifying.

As pale brown pine needles whirled around them, the old woman looked down on Jung Yeonshin with her hand behind her back.

"So you insist on hastening your death. Did you wish so badly to die in a single stroke?"

Jung Yeonshin calmly met her gaze, resting his hand on Northern Radiance's silver hilt.

"Worry about your own karma. You're an old monster of the unorthodox path, soon to fall into hell."

"..."

Yeo Sohyang's mouth twisted.

"Child, those eyes of yours are as strange as your tongue. What are you looking at now?"

"All of you."

The Radiant Demon Squad captain's eyes flashed with brilliant blue light.