***
"Un-hyeon, step forward."
Jin-mu's cold voice cut the air.
Un-hyeon was a second-generation disciple of the Diancang Sect and Jin-mu's registered disciple.
To Jin-mu, the boy was the one who would resolve his old grudge. Failing to become Sect Leader was the regret of a thousand autumns for him.
He intended to use this chance to give his registered disciple a sure opportunity to win a great merit.
A great merit in a fight against the Demonic Cult would become a foundation for challenging for the next Sect Leader's seat.
'Those fallen Dan Clan bastards are just the right prey.'
Un-hyeon, his life-gate acupoint protruding sharply, stepped forward with his sword raised, a profound light pouring from his eyes.
Red firelight reflected off his blade and flashed.
"I am Un-hyeon, second-generation disciple of the Diancang Sect."
His voice was deep and strong, as befit a disciple of a great and famous sect.
"Hand over the ice crystal. If you do not resist, I will send the rest of your family off without pain."
It sounded less like an order than a judge's sentence.
In any case the people of the Dan Clan had no other choice, and he did not appear to intend to wait for an answer.
The presence of the Diancang disciple who stepped forward was like looking at a single well-forged famed sword.
All the others trembled in fear at the sight, but Dan Se-min tilted his head.
'His realm does look higher than mine. But he doesn't seem to be a mountain I can't climb.'
"The ice crystal, is it."
In the boy's eyes, instead of fear or anger, there dwelt a childlike curiosity.
"So the reason you came to our clan was nothing more than this ice crystal?"
Un-hyeon's brows knotted.
"Bastard! What nonsense are you......"
"If that's not it, then it's very strange."
Se-min's voice cut gently through the other's words.
"Men who are called Daoist priests, and they can't hide the greed in their eyes."
The wind stopped.
The faces of the Diancang Daoists flushed red all at once, yet Dan Se-min's words did not falter.
"Well, even with ten mouths you'd have nothing to say."
He stood before Daoists of the Nine Sects whose faces he could hardly have dared meet on an ordinary day, yet he showed no sign of being cowed.
"The Dan Clan, descendants of the royal house of the Dali Kingdom, has been a pillar of the orthodox sects for generations and has upheld the order of the murim. And yet the Diancang Sect, which might be called a head of the orthodox sects, swarms here to exterminate our clan......, is that not a truly strange thing?"
No one could answer that.
Only the torchlight around them crackled and wavered.
"Is this the nature of those who call themselves orthodox?"
Un-hyeon clenched his teeth.
"If you mean to insult the Diancang Sect, you had best shut your mouth."
"The young Daoists may not know it, but the old Daoists of Diancang will remember the incident called the 'Azure Cloud Massacre' thirty years ago."
"......!"
In that instant, the faces of Jin-mu and the Sword Saint stiffened faintly.
They had probably never imagined that anyone here would speak "that name" again.
'How does that young bastard know of that incident?'
The contents of every book the clan possessed were packed away inside Se-min's head.
The records concerning the secret annals of the murim were his favorites of all.
"The Diancang Sect claimed that remnants of the Demonic Cult were hiding in Yunnan and killed twenty young masters of the Azure Cloud Sect, which had been founded not long before. But according to what a later investigation by the Murim Alliance revealed, they were not of the Demonic Cult."
Se-min's eyes caught the firelight and shone red.
"And ten years later, the Limitless Sword said to have been created by the Diancang Sect was oddly similar to the techniques of the Azure Cloud Sect. Was that truly a coincidence?"
Un-hyeon tightened the hand gripping his sword.
"Th-that cannot be. That is...... slander!"
"Perhaps. But is it not too neat a coincidence?"
Se-min smiled and went on.
"The orthodox sects curse the demonic path, yet they are greedier than the demons themselves; they call themselves chivalrous heroes, yet they are nothing but jackals lusting after wealth and fame."
The Daoists of the Diancang Sect, Jin-mu among them, all flushed and clamped their mouths shut.
"A worm who has learned a demonic art wags his tongue without even knowing this is the place he dies!"
Un-hyeon flushed and raised his sword high. Perhaps from agitation, his hand trembled.
"D-die! You bastard!"
SWISH. Just as his sword was about to fall on Dan Se-min's head.
GRIP. A hand shot out and coiled around Un-hyeon's hand.
A Seizing Hand technique unfolded naturally.
From the palm gripping Un-hyeon, the fire qi of the Blazing Heaven Divine Art blazed up.
An enormous fire qi shuddered across into Un-hyeon's arm.
"Y-you bastard?"
Un-hyeon thrashed in shock, but no matter how he strained, he could not pull his arm free.
Un-hyeon's arm burned away in the flames.
It felt as if he were caught in the mouth of a fire dragon.
"GRAAAAH!"
A wretched scream, unbefitting a disciple of a great and famous sect, rang out.
At the sound, the eyes of the Diancang Daoists all widened alike.
A strange light entered Se-min's eyes.
So even disciples of the Nine Great Sects scream. They're men, not immortals.
Se-min realized that he had overestimated martial artists.
He had thought of them as beings like half-immortals.
And so, in a corner of himself, he had been a little afraid.
But they feel pain like ordinary people.
Learning that, Se-min felt at ease.
"L-let go, you bastard!"
But with no way to pull back his sword hand, Un-hyeon loaded his left hand with palm force and swung.
Light flashed from his fingertips.
Energy stretched out, and the empty air split.
There was no sword in his hand, but the current riding on his fingertips was as sharp as a blade.
Hou Yi Shoots the Sun!
Un-hyeon's battle cry burst out.
In one instant, dozens of thrusts erupted from the empty air at once.
The air currents were severed, and the wind was torn apart.
Seeing the technique Un-hyeon unfolded, the Diancang Daoists drew small smiles at their lips.
Un-hyeon was a swordsman confident enough in his fast sword to be called "One Sword, Three Breaths."
But Dan Se-min did not move a single step.
He stood perfectly still and took the technique Un-hyeon unfolded into his eyes. The flow of true qi running through his opponent's hand began to become visible.
It felt as though time and space had stopped.
Un-hyeon's hand slowed.
In that fleeting gap, an enlightenment came upon Se-min.
'So this is Hou Yi Shoots the Sun......'
A speed the eye could not follow.
And yet it had by no means lost its essence to that speed.
'I have to predict the opponent's movement and lead it.'
Just then an oral formula flashed like lightning through Dan Se-min's head.
'Knowing Speed Within Stillness.'
Within stillness, one attains speed.
'It is only that the eye cannot follow.'
In that fleeting moment a new martial principle came to him.
The newly gained realization melted naturally into his body.
Merely by recalling the realization, Se-min's hand moved of itself.
His hand began to move faster than his awareness.
Motions close to foresight, predicting his opponent's movements, followed one after another.
THWACK-THWACK-THWACK!
The two men's hands clashed dozens of times in midair.
"H-how?"
Un-hyeon's eyes went wide as every technique was blocked.
It was still too early to be surprised.
"......The time you people enjoy is wasted on you."
As he finished speaking, Dan Se-min's hand punched straight through Un-hyeon's throat.
"HACK!"
Meeting a futile death, Un-hyeon died with both eyes wide open, unable to let go of his attachment to this world.
"......!"
A disciple of the great Diancang Sect had died, unable to defeat the scion of a decayed house.
At that shocking sight, no one could open their mouth.
Dan Se-min, too, kept his silence.
He stood blankly and looked down at his hand, red blood running from it.
It is as if insects are crawling up my fingers, Dan Se-min thought.
An unpleasant sensation ruled his whole body, but no pity rose for the corpse of his opponent.
'So my nature really is that of a martial artist.'
It was the first time he had killed a man, yet no fear came.
It was because he had thought the moment would come someday, and because his own indifferent temperament had, from childhood, differed from other people's in many ways.
"U-Un-hyeon!"
The one who broke the silence was Jin-mu.
At first he did not understand whose the red blood spraying toward the sky was.
But the moment his only disciple's body crumpled limply to the ground, Jin-mu's pupils wandered the empty air like a man who had lost his country.
"Uwaaah!"
His lips trembled, and his breath came in broken gasps.
The boy who would one day become Sect Leader in his place.
He had lost the registered disciple he had personally taken in and put a sword into the hands of.
Was this the pain they called the grief of severed innards?
"Un-hyeon......, my disciple...... a boy who was like my own child...!"
Jin-mu's voice tore to shreds.
"D-disciples of Diancang, seize that bastard and kill him at once!!"
Jin-mu's cry rang out like lightning.
In an instant, dozens of Diancang Daoists drew their swords as one.
The sound of dozens of blades leaving their sheaths at once layered like thunder.
And soon dozens of sword shadows fell upon Dan Se-min.
The first sword flew in.
From his right, a second and a third sword qi crowded in one after another.
Dozens of silver lines drawn in the air poured down like rain.
But Se-min remained standing where he was.
Flames bloomed inside his eyes.
He raised the Blazing Heaven Divine Art to the fifth stage. The energy of blazing flame shot upward.
Each time his toes brushed the ground, a scorching current burst out and covered the earth.
The wind burned, and the sword qi evaporated on touching the flames before it could ever reach him.
FWOOSH! FWOOSH! FWOOSH!
The Daoists' bodies were engulfed in flame and hurled backward.
Some spat out screams, some astonishment.
"What is this searing energy?"
"How is a boy from a fallen clan this strong?"
"It's a demonic art! He has clearly learned a demonic art!"
The petty excuses of the defeated went on, but Se-min had no intention of answering.
He only breathed fire qi into his sword, evaporating the blood that ran stickily down the blade, and asked.
"Is the sword of Diancang only this much?"
KABOOM!
Flames burst from Se-min's hand like a storm.
The Diancang disciples crossed their swords to block the flames, but the force of the fire pushed them back.
Some dropped their swords, and some, their arms burning, began rolling on the ground to put the fire out.
"S-Se-min!"
His father Dan Cheon-hwi's cry burst out from behind, but the blaze had already grown beyond control.
The blue-tinged light in Se-min's eyes no longer looked like a human's either.
Just then, the sky split.
BOOM!
A single shaft of sword light tore the sky and fell.
Dan Se-min hurled himself aside in haste and evaded it.
The owner of that light was Jin-song, the Shadowless Sword Saint, Sect Leader of the Diancang Sect.
"Youuuu baaaastard!"
With that single word, the flames Dan Se-min had been embroidering across the sky halted.
Floating in midair with his sword drawn, the Shadowless Sword Saint was the very incarnation of the sword.
"So a hidden dragon lay here! But to dare harm the disciples of Diancang, your fate will be one that never ascends to heaven."
Not even the hem of his robe, hanging in the air, stirred in the wind.
Energy rode the light of his eyes, and Dan Se-min's martial arts uniform fluttered.
Dan Se-min raised his head and looked up at the Sword Saint.
'The Shadowless Sword Saint, one of the Ten Greatest Masters. Before I die, I want to take in with my own eyes how strong he is.'
The Sword Saint did not miss that gaze full of fighting spirit.
"Insolent bastard!"
The Sword Saint slowly raised his sword.
The next moment.
SHHK!
The sword vanished.
No. It was simply too fast for the eye to see.
Se-min twisted his body reflexively and blocked.
KABOOM!
A blast erupted, and the ground caved in.
The main gate split in half,
and flames shot upward.
The Sword Saint's sword left no trace of its path.
His sword tore the air again.
CRASH!
Again Se-min blocked with his sword.
His body was pushed backward.
Blood ran from the corner of his mouth.
'Fast indeed.'
He deserved the name "Shadowless Sword."
No one could see the shadow of his blade.
Once more the sword sought Se-min.
He raised his arm and blocked.
KABOOM!
The instant the sword struck,
Se-min felt a pain like his wrist bones shattering.
His body was driven back and slammed into a wall.
The Shadowless Sword Saint descended to the ground.
His sword tip stretched in a straight line toward Se-min's abdomen.
The air split and earth scattered across the ground.
"Tenacious bastard! Now...... it ends!"
At that moment.
SHRRK.
Silver light bloomed from Se-min's body.
Scales flashed and rose across his skin.
They were the hard, smooth scales of a naga.
In that instant, the Sword Saint's sword touched those scales.
KRAAANG!
The sword was flung back.
A powerful rebounding qi exploded.
The Sword Saint's body was pushed backward in midair.
"Body-protecting enhanced qi......?"
The Sword Saint could only stare at Se-min with wide, disbelieving eyes.
It was the first time in ten years that his sword had been blocked.