Chapter 176: Running Rampant (10)

Blood had pooled across the ground.

So much of it that it was hard to believe it had all come from a single person.

And there stood a man holding a saber wreathed in flames.

The other guards had rushed over and surrounded him, but none dared approach.

Their fellow guard lay before them, split cleanly in half from between the brows all the way down to the groin.

Even though the blade had been searing hot, blood had poured from him in astonishing quantities.

Two men looked down upon the scene.

Eunsong and Eun Jeong.

“Do you recognize him?”

“I don’t. But I’ve only ever heard of one saber art that sets the blade aflame.”

“The same occurred to me, but...”

The Flame-Dragon Saber Canon.

And Ak Jupae, the Flame-Saber Lord.

The man who had defected to the Demonic Cult.

That was all they knew.

Of course, the famous Flame-Dragon Saber Canon was not the only saber art founded on a blazing yang art.

But across the Nine Provinces, there was no chance they would fail to know someone who had reached such a realm.

Because those black flames burning along the man’s blade—

their color was unsettling, but they were unmistakably Force.

If there was another Transformation Realm master capable of coating a saber in incomplete Saber Force that surged like fire...

then, frankly, neither of them could think of anyone besides Ak Jupae.

Yet the man looked far too different to be him.

A gaunt body.

Hunched shoulders.

Dry, mottled skin covered in dark age spots.

“...We should subdue him first.”

“A Transformation Realm master? The two of us?”

Eun Jeong had finally entered the early stage of the Transformation Realm not long ago.

But it was far too soon for him to grow conceited and think himself firmly established there.

He was at the very beginning of the beginning.

He could not even maintain that unstable Sword Force for nearly as long as the man below maintained his own.

Eunsong, meanwhile, had trained with brutal intensity and reached the middle stage of Transcendent Apex.

But if asked whether that made him fit to interfere in a battle between Transformation Realm masters...

he could not honestly say he was confident.

“I’ll draw his attention and tie up his arms. Brother, look for an opening.”

“...Do you think that will work?”

“We won’t know until we try.”

Even Elder Jeonggang, the Mount Hua Sword Emperor once called the martial world’s second strongest man, had stopped at the middle stage of the Transformation Realm.

Calling someone merely “early stage” made the realm sound far less terrifying than it truly was.

Reaching it at all made one something close to a living natural disaster.

Eunsong let out a long sigh.

Then he nodded.

“Let’s go.”

“A wise decision.”

Eunsong and Eun Jeong stopped watching from above and descended toward the foot of Mount Hua.

They cast themselves down the slope, lightly stepping on branches along the way.

*****

“S-somebody stop him!”

“How are we supposed to stop that?!”

“Are you insane? There’s no stopping that thing!”

The guards were on the verge of outright panic.

Even the strongest among them were only First-Rate.

Most remained Second-Rate.

There was simply nothing they could do against a wandering martial artist flaunting black Saber Force that burned like a living flame.

And they had already watched one of their companions get split perfectly in half.

They had only taken jobs guarding Mount Hua.

Most of them were Branch Family disciples, and that was the only reason they had not thrown down their swords and fled already.

Then—

a voice rang out from behind them like salvation.

“Everyone, move aside!”

It was the roar of Eun Jeong, the Mount Hua Sword Dragon.

Walking calmly behind him was Eunsong, the White Plum Scholar.

The two had rushed down Mount Hua using powerful Lightness Arts, ordered the guards back, and stepped forward to confront the strange man themselves.

So as not to block the path of the main mountain disciples.

And, more importantly, to stay alive...

the guards split apart in perfect order and opened the way.

They had been so terrified that tears of hope were already welling in their eyes.

“I-it’s the Mount Hua Sword Dragon!”

“The Mount Hua Sword Dragon! The great hero who reached the Transformation Realm not long ago!”

In truth, none of them expected much from Eunsong’s martial power.

Eun Jeong was another matter.

The fact that he had finally reached the Transformation Realm had been cause for celebration throughout Mount Hua.

Everyone knew of it.

And to the low-level martial artists gathered there, his arrival was nothing short of a lifeline.

They would not have to face a Transformation Realm master themselves?

That alone was enough to make them fall to the ground and thank heaven and earth.

“W-we’re saved!”

“B-but what if the great hero loses...?”

“You idiot! Shut your damn mouth!”

Eunsong almost wanted to hand the man who had shouted that a silver piece.

Because at this moment, their situation truly was one of life and death.

Yet the man whose saber burned with black Saber Force was not even looking at them.

He merely gazed up toward the summit of Mount Hua.

“...The man you just killed was a disciple of Mount Hua.”

There was no answer.

Only heavy silence.

The man continued staring toward the summit.

And then, in that instant, an eerie sense of danger crawled across Eun Jeong’s skin.

What followed was pure instinct.

CLANG—!!!

The man’s strange, slender, curved saber met Mount Hua’s straight sword in midair.

Blazing Saber Force collided head-on with Sword Force burning in a straight line.

It was a battle that scarcely seemed real.

A collision where the unreal and the supernatural overlapped.

Everyone stared directly into the thunderous impact.

The man and Eun Jeong touched down again almost simultaneously.

Eun Jeong let out a low grunt.

It was obvious he had been pushed back.

More importantly, the Sword Force coating his blade was unstable.

His opponent’s was not.

That black, burning Saber Force preserved the shape of its flames perfectly.

Both men had wrapped their weapons in incomplete Force, but there was a clear difference in mastery.

Eun Jeong felt a dull ache in his wrist.

This man was not merely at the early stage of the Transformation Realm.

He was someone standing just one step away from leaving that stage behind.

Eun Jeong, by contrast, had been in the Transformation Realm for what?

A few days?

“...Who are you, and where have you come from, that you seek to climb Mount Hua?”

“...I came looking for someone.”

The voice was cracked and hoarse.

But Eunsong suddenly realized he had heard it somewhere before.

Not this dry and ruined, perhaps, but he had definitely heard a similar voice.

He came looking for... someone?

Eunsong frowned and searched his memory.

Someone who might come to Mount Hua.

A saber user.

A martial art like flame...

There was still only one answer.

And yet nothing about the man’s appearance resembled Ak Jupae, the Flame-Saber Lord.

More importantly—

there was no Demonic Energy.

Someone from the Demonic Cult should have used Demonic Energy in place of internal energy, leaving behind that sinister, cold, sticky presence.

Yet from this man, the only ominous thing was the black color of his Saber Force.

He gave off none of the clammy chill unique to Demonic Energy.

“I asked who you are.”

“You want to know who I am?”

His voice was unpleasant enough to grate on the ears.

Like scraping one piece of metal against another.

Eunsong’s brow furrowed.

The man slowly turned his gaze toward Eunsong.

His eyes flashed.

And in that instant, Demonic Energy exploded outward in every direction.

“You want to know... who I am?”

Rage boiled beneath his low voice.

Along with bottomless sorrow.

And grief so terrible it seemed unbearable.

Only then did Eunsong correctly infer the man’s identity, regardless of everything his eyes had been telling him.

“...Flame-Saber Lord Ak Jupae. Is that you?”

“Now... you recognize me.”

It was even more astonishing that he had concealed such dense Demonic Energy all the way here.

And that he could manifest Force while keeping the Demonic Energy hidden.

No—

more precisely, he was clearly controlling it with extreme precision, preventing it from leaking beyond the Saber Force itself.

He was a Demonic Human.

There was no other way to explain that Saber Force.

Eunsong narrowed his eyes.

He remembered what he had told Zhuge Yeon three years ago.

If the Demonic Cult truly knew that the sword wounds left on Ak Seowon, Ak Jupae’s son, were connected to Mount Hua...

then Ak Jupae would come to Mount Hua.

In the end, his prediction had come true.

The man wanted revenge.

“So who did you come here looking for?”

Eunsong asked quietly.

At the same time, he slowly drew the Plum Blossom Sword at his waist.

Ak Jupae seemed not to care in the slightest.

And why would he?

He was a Transformation Realm master.

More than that, a Transformation Realm member of the Demonic Cult who had succeeded in replacing all of his power with Demonic Energy.

There was no reason for him to pay any mind to the martial prowess of a mere Transcendent Apex fighter.

“Don’t you know?”

“I do not.”

“I came... for my enemy.”

By then, Eun Jeong had already moved to Eunsong’s side.

The guards also remained standing behind Eunsong and Eun Jeong.

Seen one way, they were hiding behind the two fellow disciples...

but the fact that they still had not fled was courage enough to deserve respect.