Wudang Sacred Scriptures

Chapter 207

—Sh-sh-sh-shlak!

As forty-odd fiends leveled their weapons all at once, murderous intent flooded the temple court in an instant.

Perhaps because the torchlight rippled, the gleam pouring from the fiends’ eyes looked truly baleful.

They’re still just demon footmen with numbers, Chwi Dugae thought,

and he raised the Tagu Staff while he watched them close, step by step.

Before a Fire Realm master like Kwak Yeon scythed them down like dry grass, he gauged how many would reach him in turn.

Maybe ten will be enough to get a feel for the strike.

That much would at least save face for a Hu Gae.

Had the Blood-Chant Demon Monk regained his original power, this would not have been an easy fight.

He had heard so much about the demon lords of the Demonic Eight Divisions from his master that his ears had grown callused.

“If a demon lord of the Demonic Eight Divisions is anywhere near your level, you never let your guard down. Those devils use mutual-destruction killing arts like daily bread. That’s why so many heroes of the martial world died during the Upheaval.”

When he asked what to do if he came face to face with a demon lord his equal, his master answered: if you can’t kill him now, cut and run without a qualm.

If you can’t kill a man who’s rushing to die together, then of course you’ll die there yourself.

Through his master, Chwi Dugae had glimpsed the deep-rooted dread martial folk bore toward the Demonic Eight Divisions.

He could understand why, in hosting the All-Under-Heaven Heroes Assembly, the Martial Alliance was throwing everything into suppressing them.

Either way, for the moment he was only facing demon footmen. He could simply lay about him with the Tagu Staff and batter them down.

Which one first?

He spun the Tagu Staff, apportioning inner true energy evenly through the acupoints of wrist and shoulder—then his eyes widened.

The momentum of the fiends, now within five zhang, had changed completely.

And not only their momentum.

A dark-red aura rippled along their blades.

Sword-qi.

It was no torchlit illusion.

The sharp force pricked his skin.

It made no sense.

So many demon footmen—all of them at the Peak Master tier, manifesting sword-qi?

Chwi Dugae understood why the Blood-Chant Demon Monk had been so confident.

With nearly forty Peak Master fiends, he had reason to boast.

Damn it. This isn’t even the main altar of the Gathering Demons Division. How is this possible?

Absurd as it was, he still wasn’t worried.

Alone, he might have struggled badly, but at his side stood an absolute master at Mid-Subjugation in the Fire Realm.

He only regretted that he would have to slash his “taste of the strike” quota drastically.

Then Kwak Yeon spoke, just like that.

“Brother, I’ll take the front. However much of a pity it is, please hold your place for the moment.”

—Whish!

Seeing Kwak Yeon launch without waiting for his answer, Chwi Dugae realized he had already taken the fiends’ tier at a glance.

He’s in the Fire Realm—of course he has.

It pricked his pride a little, but he wasn’t put out; he knew Kwak Yeon meant to ease his burden.

And if he rushed in now, he’d only be in the way.

Curious as well to see what progress Kwak Yeon had made in the meantime, Chwi Dugae drew up his inner true energy and watched his movement.

As Kwak Yeon moved, the fiends tightened the ring and came on in earnest.

—Thud-thud-thud-thud!

As forty fiends advanced in battle steps, the ground trembled.

Torchlight wavered, and the temple court filled with a chaos of shadows.

Kwak Yeon’s body flashed into those shadows.

Of course the blades shouldered with icy-blue sword-qi came pouring toward him.

—Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!

With a clamor of steel, bright sparks flared around him—and then gouts of blood began to jet on every side.

—Pah! Pah! Pat!

Chwi Dugae’s eyes bulged.

He saw that Kwak Yeon’s Cheonggang Sword was sheathed not in sword-gang, but in sword-qi.

Up to now, Kwak Yeon had overwhelmed opponents at a stroke with the overpowering regimen of sword-gang—

cutting even sword-qi-laden blades clean through, giving his foes no time to work any concord of arts.

But now, he had set aside that mighty regimen of sword-gang and was meeting his foes with sword-qi alone—

though scores of them were manifesting sword-qi.

Chwi Dugae swiftly understood why.

Ah! He’s learned an ascending sword art.

And one so superb it beggared belief.

Sparks blossomed ceaselessly around Kwak Yeon’s moving form.

—Cheng! Cheng! Cheng! Cheng!

If not for the shrieking keen that split the ears, it might have seemed a meteor shower had fallen to light his perimeter.

He’s batting aside that rain of blades near-simultaneously!

Not only that—he slipped into the wobble of their sword-lines and severed them in a blink.

Every process was so swift the eye could barely follow; only after Kwak Yeon had passed did the blood fountains burst.

Heavens.

Even an ordinary art becomes a divine absolute in the hands of a Fire Realm master.

And now a master at Mid-Subjugation was wielding a transcendent divine art—like giving a tiger wings.

Chwi Dugae suddenly had a different worry.

That he would stand there gaping while the fight ended.

Fortunately, Kwak Yeon had swept a circle of roughly five zhang and was already drifting back to his starting point.

A dozen or so fiends lay in a ring like sheaves.

“Ha! I don’t even know what I just saw,” Chwi Dugae breathed, awe and shock mingled.

Shaking blood from the Cheonggang Sword, Kwak Yeon said, “My apologies. I wanted to test a sword art I’ve just learned, in a real fight.”

Chwi Dugae, as a martial man, understood that feeling. He had had his own times like that.

“In any case, the front line is meant to be easier. From here it will be in earnest. You should ready yourself.”

At his words, Chwi Dugae nodded, infusing the Tagu Staff with force.

“Understood.”

In a surround, the front line generally aims to tire the foe; the capable men wait in the second line to begin the true assault.

—Thud-thud-thud-thud!

The second line vaulted over their fallen comrades and charged.

As Kwak Yeon had said, their edge was keener than when the first line had come on.

What is more, a few of them sprang up over their comrades’ heads as they ran and dropped toward Kwak Yeon and Chwi Dugae.

Not only the court but the air itself filled with demon shadows.

—Shuat!

Again, Kwak Yeon met them with sword-qi alone on the Cheonggang Sword. It wasn’t only to test the Falling Star Nine Swords in a real fight.

Against many foes exuding Peak Master sword-qi, if he used gang-force as before, he couldn’t know when he might run short of inner true energy.

No need to dull the ox-knife to dress a chicken.

By bitter experience, Kwak Yeon had come to understand that the higher the master, the more strictly he husbanded his inner true energy against unforeseeable peril.

In contests between such men, a pennyweight of power often decided life or death.

Without a proper schooling in the martial world, Kwak Yeon had come out and always fought at full force without a thought for before or after.

Now, all the more, he needed to reserve his inner strength.

He had seen the Blood-Chant Demon Monk’s self-assured smile when Chwi Dugae asked, Is this paltry thing all the trap you prepared?

“Once you face them, you won’t find them lacking. Don’t be disappointed.”

A wily former demon lord of the Gathering Demons Division likely had the true adversaries waiting out there in the dark.

—Fweee!

Kwak Yeon bounded unflinching toward the fiends filling the sky and dropping.

A lightness method: Treading Water, Swallow in Flight.

His body vaulted into the air like a swallow launching from the water’s skin.

Because he hadn’t drawn up sword-gang, he could pour his ample inner strength wholly into the lightness method—

doubling its speed and variations.

It was why he had been able to streak like a shaft of light through the front line and topple men as he passed.

Of course, without having learned the Falling Star Nine Swords, the supreme sword art, it would have been impossible to attempt.

—Shuk! Shyuuk! Shuut!

As if waiting for him to rise, their blades shot toward him.

Spinning, Kwak Yeon unfurled the First Sword Form: Falling Star Ten Thousand Changes.

—Shuaaat!

The First Sword Form—a supreme defensive sequence that releases twenty-eight moves in a flash.

Spun out while revolving midair, it made his whole body look as if walled round by the Cheonggang Sword.

—Tang! Taang! Taaang!

The sound that filled the air was like sledgehammers pounding an iron plate.

The fiends felt the impact as if they had been struck by real hammers.

Jarr!

Knuckles felt as if smashed; some men’s palms even split.

Even so, not one dropped his sword.

Seeing his body shoot past and climb higher, they twisted in mid-fall, though they were still plummeting toward the ground.

They could not bare the back of their heads to the enemy.

Even slamming to the paving on their backs was better than having the back of the head punched through and dying at once.

Only—that was their thought.

The thin blue sword-qi sheathing Kwak Yeon’s blade was already sweeping across their torsos.

—Shhhhh!

Passing them while guarding with the First Sword Form, he used the recoil of the spin to flip and at once executed Spring Light Soaks Snow—the twelve-form sequence of the Grand Clarity Sword Method.

What he now released of Spring Light Soaks Snow differed sharply from before.

By spreading the sword-qi thin, he had doubled its reach.

It was a phenomenon born of the ascending sword principles he had gained while training the Falling Star Nine Swords bleeding naturally into his other methods.

Of course, the ground for him to receive those ascending subtleties—and to work the Taiji Sword Method or the So Cheong Sword with a new fluid grace—was the faculty of the Honwonmusang Technique.

Without the ascending sword art of the Falling Star Nine Swords, none of this could have been, and he understood why martial men coveted ascending arts so fiercely.

—Papap! Papat! Papat! Pat!

Five fiends slammed to the ground, spraying blood.

—Thud-thud-thud-thud!

One of them had his waist halved into two pieces; the rest still had human shapes as they crashed and writhed.

“Ghak!”

“Grrrk!”

“Ggghhh!”

He had cut vital death-points; they were spewing blood. They would expire shortly; there was no reason to look back.

Unlike before, when he hewed mercilessly with gang-force, Kwak Yeon was dispatching foes with efficiency.

Above all, he had no wish to grant these men the mercy of instant death.

He wished the fiends who made Human Offering would feel as much pain as possible before they died.

—Whir!

Having finished those foes midair in a breath, Kwak Yeon used a nimble lightness step to spring skyward again and swept the court with a rapid glance.

He needed to see with his own eyes how Chwi Dugae was faring.