***
Soul Fiend's foot tore the air again.
SHWEEEK—!
He moved at a speed that could not be described by the word "fast," but Dan Se-min concentrated the light of his eyes on the man's toes.
The instant Soul Fiend planted one foot on the ground, he had already arrived at his next position.
'The flow of true qi explodes.'
In that fleeting moment when his foot touched the earth.
The flow of true qi running along the muscles and blood vessels inside his leg changed.
The energy that normally circulated gently compressed into a single point the moment he pushed off, and exploded.
Thanks to that explosion of true qi, Soul Fiend was driving his body forward at speed.
'So that was the principle.'
Fascinating. So the flow of qi can be used that way to move quickly. Dan Se-min's face filled with curiosity.
Once he understood the flow of the qi, it felt as though time were passing slowly.
At that moment.
SHWEEEK—!
Soul Fiend's kick came flying at Se-min's head again.
But Dan Se-min's response had already changed.
Instead of evading, he sent blazing yang qi flowing down into his legs.
He gathered true qi into a single point at his toes, exploded it, and shifted his body backward.
SSSWISH!
'This much speed?'
It was a movement even Dan Se-min himself found hard to believe.
SLIDE. Soul Fiend's foot passed through empty air.
CRASH!
Soul Fiend's toes cut through the air and came down.
The stones of the ground flew in every direction from the impact.
But Dan Se-min, who should have been standing there, was nowhere to be seen.
Soul Fiend's eyes shook violently.
'How did this bastard?'
Only moments ago he had been hard pressed just to block, and now he had read and evaded the attack.
"......!"
When he turned his gaze aside, Dan Se-min was looking at him with a delighted expression.
"......So this is how it is done."
Dan Se-min murmured, feeling the heat still lingering at his toes.
"Truly interesting."
Soul Fiend was already no longer his concern.
His attention was taken up by the movement technique he had newly learned.
He took another step.
"Martial arts really are fascinating."
The leg muscles contract, and true qi crowds into them.
Then it bursts out as if exploding and drives the body forward.
This time a far more violent energy exploded from his toes.
Because of the blazing yang qi, it looked as though flames were bursting beneath his feet.
Scorched marks were left along the ground he had passed over, as if a forest fire had swept through.
"Flame flows......"
Flame Flow Step. From now on I will call this movement technique the Flame Flow Step, Dan Se-min murmured, looking at the traces he had left.
It was the first martial art he had ever created, so he forgot even that he was in the middle of a duel and drew a bright smile at his lips.
When Soul Fiend saw his opponent ignoring him entirely and practicing a movement technique, his face flushed red.
Since he had first set foot in the murim, it was the first humiliation like this.
"This insolent bastard......"
Soul Fiend launched one attack after another.
He did not spare his true qi. He no longer had the leisure to hold back his hand.
But as time passed, his heart grew more frantic, and his hands and feet grew more and more disordered.
At some point his attacks came faster, yet he could scarcely land a blow on Dan Se-min.
Once again Soul Fiend's foot cut through empty air and passed by.
Now it was rather Soul Fiend who was straining to chase Dan Se-min's movements.
'When the fight began this bastard was hard pressed just to dodge. How?'
Soul Fiend's face twisted.
He had not merely been dodging attacks.
Dan Se-min had deliberately maintained a gap of about half a step, and Soul Fiend, being no fool, read that intent.
'This bastard has been practicing his footwork on me!'
"How can anyone get this much faster all at once?"
Had he grown in the middle of it?
Soul Fiend halted his attacks and, with a terrified expression, took a step back without meaning to.
It was an act that came out of his unconscious.
It was the expression of the fear that comes unbidden when one witnesses a being of astonishing talent.
Soul Fiend had lived as a martial artist for over forty years under the name of the Blood-Soul Twin Fiends. Eat that much blade-rice and even a man with no instincts develops them.
For the first time, Soul Fiend felt the boy before him to be frightening.
There had been cases in the martial world of men who became masters swiftly through inborn talent, but he had never seen a case of someone growing so much as to create a martial art in the middle of a fight.
SWISH. A faint heat lingered on the ground Dan Se-min had passed over.
Dan Se-min, appearing before his eyes without warning, spoke.
"My thanks."
Soul Fiend's eyes flew open.
"Thanks to you, I have learned a serviceable footwork."
"......What?"
Realizing that he could no longer catch Dan Se-min with movement arts, impatience flickered in Soul Fiend's eyes.
'This will not do.'
Soul Fiend thrust both hands forward like lightning.
"Die!"
Dan Se-min lightly raised his right hand as well and blocked Soul Fiend's hands.
SMACK!
The two men's palms met exactly.
Soul Fiend's aim was a contest of qi.
The simplest and the most dangerous kind of fight.
The corner of Soul Fiend's mouth twisted.
'Foolish bastard.'
The boy before him.
However he looked at him, he was not yet twenty.
Whereas he himself had accumulated a full sixty-year cycle of inner arts.
In a direct contest of qi, there was no way he could lose.
'This is the difference of experience.'
KWAAAH!
True qi surged up from Soul Fiend's qi center as if exploding.
An enormous qi pushed through his palm and into Dan Se-min.
'As I thought.'
His expectation had struck true. There was not even proper resistance.
Soul Fiend's qi was flowing in like a river flowing into the sea.
'At this rate he will not hold out long!'
Soul Fiend's mouth spread wide. It was the moment he became certain of victory.
But little by little, Soul Fiend began to feel a wrongness.
"......?"
By now the young bastard ought to have been writhing in agony.
Yet his complexion had not changed at all.
On the contrary, his own qi was draining away quickly.
"......"
Soul Fiend's eyes went wide. Only then did he realize.
'I-it is being sucked away.'
Against his will, his true qi was being absorbed into Dan Se-min.
"Hup......!"
Soul Fiend's face went pale.
"The Star-Absorbing Grand Technique?!"
He tried to pull his hand away at once, but Dan Se-min would not release it.
"L-let go, you bastard!"
Speaking during a contest of qi was taboo.
The moment one's breathing was disturbed, it could lead straight to defeat.
"Khuk!"
His true qi twisted, but Soul Fiend was in no position to worry about such things.
At this rate all of his qi would soon be drained.
The corner of Dan Se-min's mouth rose ever so faintly.
"Do you begrudge the qi?"
"......!"
Soul Fiend's eyes bulged. Dan Se-min's voice did not so much as waver. That meant his qi was far superior.
"H-how does a young bastard have such enormous inner arts?"
Having absorbed the entire energy of the Ten-Thousand-Year Ice Crystal, Dan Se-min's inner arts already amounted to two sixty-year cycles.
Soul Fiend, who had no way of knowing that, wore a face full of shock.
"Who set you on me? Tell me who is behind this."
"Kh-khuuk!"
His qi nearly drained, Soul Fiend dropped to his knees.
"So you will not talk."
The blazing yang qi rippling around Dan Se-min's body flowed along his arm and into Soul Fiend.
"......!"
Burning fire qi.
That heat made Soul Fiend recall the sight of Blood Fiend engulfed in flames and screaming.
Flesh burning away, bone laid bare, and in the end not even a shape left as he turned to ash.
"Nnngh, n-no......!"
Terror rose in Soul Fiend's eyes.
Soul Fiend's body shook.
The blazing yang qi that had seeped in through his arm was boring deeper and deeper.
"Ngh......, ngaaah......!"
The scream that tore from his throat was no longer a human one.
Dan Se-min looked down at Soul Fiend without a word.
The Blood-Soul Twin Fiends who had made people tremble in terror were nowhere to be found.
The old fiend's body was shriveling so visibly that even Se-min could see it plainly.
"S-stop......!"
Soul Fiend ground his teeth and tried to endure, but the blazing yang qi bored in deeper.
"GRAAAGH!"
"S-spare me......"
Soul Fiend wailed wretchedly.
"I will tell you everything. I will tell you everything, so spare my life."
The great demonic villain called Soul Fiend was gone without a trace.
There was only the figure of an old man thrashing in his desire to hold on to his life.
'What sort of creatures are martial artists?'
A man who only moments ago had been trying to kill him
was now driving his head into the ground and begging for his life.
'Strong to the weak, and this abject before the strong......'
Another scene surfaced in his head.
The sight of the Diancang Sect swarming in to trample the Dan Clan.
It had been the same then.
They had thrust their blades forward without a thought in order to take the Ten-Thousand-Year Ice Crystal.
Because they believed their opponent was weak, they had no scruples.
Soul Fiend crawled across the ground and clutched at Dan Se-min's leg.
"Spare me......! I will live like a dog for the rest of my life...! Anything you order."
'Does he want to hold on to his life even that abjectly......'
He lived a life that might end at any moment from the severed meridian, but he did not wish to live so shamefully.
If anything, the sight of a man begging for life made Dan Se-min, who lived a numbered life, deeply displeased.
"Enough."
"......What?"
"Just die. That will be better than scraping out a shameful existence."
Soul Fiend's eyes widened, unable to grasp what he meant.
"W-wait!"
Soul Fiend thrashed desperately.
"I said I would talk! I will tell you everything!"
"Whoever the bastard hiding behind you is, he will show himself soon enough, so there is no need to keep alive the one who came for me."
The moment he finished speaking, blazing yang qi exploded from Dan Se-min's qi center.
An energy incomparably vaster and rougher than a moment before flowed along his arm straight into Soul Fiend.
Soul Fiend's words turned at once into screaming.
"GRAAAAAAAGH!!!"
The body of the great demonic villain who had made Shaanxi Province tremble in terror writhed on the ground.
"Spare me, spare me! Aaaagh!!!"
That scream went on at length for some time.
The sound was so ghastly that the village livestock held their breath, and startled birds took off all at once from the hill behind.
For a while, Sacred Flame Village was as silent as the dead.
What broke that stillness was someone's trembling voice.
"......He won."
"Th-that boy hero beat that old fiend!"
Every gaze turned toward one place.
A boy standing amid the black smoke surging into the sky.
The hem of his robe swayed lightly in the wind. It was a place a fierce fire demon had swept through, yet his skin shone like jade.
One old man muttered at the sight.
"......I-it has appeared."
"What has?"
"Wreathed in fire as it runs...... I saw that shape long ago."
The old man spoke with trembling eyes.
"......It is a qilin."
"A qilin, as in the spirit beast?"
"Yes. That looked just like a spirit beast running wreathed in flame."
"A qilin of crimson......"
Then someone shouted.
"It is the Crimson Qilin!"
That single phrase spread like an ember.
"The Crimson Qilin!"
"The Crimson Qilin!"
Cheers bursting out on every side drove into Dan Se-min's ears.
He stood for a while without a word and listened to the sound.
The alias Crimson Qilin was one that pointed to the appearance of a young hero.
He had cut down a wicked man, and he had gained an alias.
Something in Dan Se-min's chest resonated faintly.
He had never set out into the martial world before coming to the Demonic Cult, so this was the first time he had been called by an alias.
'The Crimson Qilin, is it.'
The common folk believed that when a sage of high virtue was born, the sacred beast the qilin appeared as an omen, and they called a child of uncommon gifts and wisdom a qilin child.
In the murim it was customary, when an outstanding prodigy appeared, to attach an alias taken from the name of a spirit beast such as a dragon or a phoenix.
And so the name "Crimson Qilin" was an alias permitted only to a truly exceptional prodigy, one that no ordinary talent could dare earn.
"......Y-Young Master!"
A trembling voice.
Yeon-hwa came running, her face flushed.
"Th-that was amazing! To beat people that frightening......!"
Her eyes were full of amazement together with admiration.
"Are you hurt anywhere?"
"No, it was nothing."
Dan Se-min brushed off his clothes lightly.
"Let's hurry back. I have to tell the Demon Empress this news."
"What news?"
"The rumor that the Crimson Qilin has appeared!"
Yeon-hwa began to run ahead of Dan Se-min.
'Not bad for a first alias. But this is only the beginning.'
Dan Se-min drew a small smile at his lips.
Dan Se-min's steps, following after Yeon-hwa, were a little lighter than before.