This year's summer solstice Vein Entry Trials, which had drawn the highest number of applicants in recent years.
In this martial contest, where a staggering one hundred twenty-eight challengers would vie for a mere twenty seats—
"Seomun Yeol of the Yang Sword Gate and Yul Hwi of the Taewon Yul Family, step forward!"
'I'm up first?'
Yul Hwi found himself called to the arena by the examiner the instant he arrived at the examination grounds.
'Of all things?'
Ultimately, since his turn to step up and fight would come sooner or later regardless, there was nothing inherently strange about being drawn first.
And yet—something about it nagged at him.
The razor-sharp instincts he had honed over a long career as an elite assassin were unmistakably warning him that some manner of manipulation had played a part in this particular order.
"Hey! Are you going to get up here or not? Don't tell me you're scared?"
Ha ha ha ha ha!
"That despicable bastard?!"
"Hm."
The young man who had bounded onto the arena and was openly hurling taunts in his direction.
Beside Yul Hwi, Baek Seol flared up in fury instead.
"How dare a nobody like him...!"
"Ha? Well, well. If it isn't Miss Baek Seol, who so luck.i.ly beat me and made it to the finals last winter solstice?"
"Don't you dare let my name roll off that filthy tongue!"
"Heh heh heh heh! Feisty as ever. Delightful."
"Wh-what did you just say?!"
Baek Seol looked ready to leap up and start a brawl on the spot.
Unlike her, however—
'What? How is someone who reached the semifinals last Vein Entry Trials standing here...?'
Yul Hwi was quite bewildered, as the warning from his instincts had immediately manifested as reality.
Because he had been told that those who finished in the top twenty of the Vein Entry Trials were given the opportunity to enter one of the two veins.
Yet for someone who had placed third or fourth in the previous trials to appear again at this one meant—
'He voluntarily gave up vein entry and wasted another half-year? Why?'
Just as he was inwardly tilting his head at this perplexing motive—
"Yul Hwi of the Taewon Yul Family! Are you going to get up here or not!"
"Hey! You, the beanpole! If you're scared, just forfeit right now!"
"For crying out loud, Young Master Yul! What are you doing?! Get up there and crush that wretched bastard!"
From the examiner to his opponent to Baek Seol right beside him—one after another, fierce urging rained down, and Yul Hwi abandoned any further deliberation, stepping willingly onto the arena.
'What do I care?'
About the motives or schemes of some worthless pest like that.
"Young Master Yul! Smash him to pieces!"
As Baek Seol's words demanded, he need only trample the fool and be done with it.
The use of Extreme Yin Qi had been forbidden for this Vein Entry Trials—a restriction he found thoroughly unimpressive.
On top of that, he was told he had to fight head-on through a formal contest for the first time in his life, and that most of the advantages he had honed as an assassin in his previous life were likewise off-limits.
"Ha! So the big man did manage to crawl up here after all?"
"Shut up."
"What...?"
"I'm talking to you."
A sidelong glance.
Looking down at his opponent—a full head shorter—with an air of utter disdain, Yul Hwi harbored not even a speck of worry.
"Pathetically weak, yet insufferably loud."
"Wh-what?! You pasty-faced barbarian, how dare—!"
"By nature, a true beast never barks without cause. Conversely, runty mutts like you can't so much as control where they piss, yet they never stop yapping."
"You son of a bitch! I'll kill you!"
The man who had thrown the first taunt was now engulfed in rage so complete that his own provocation no longer mattered.
'A pawn that doesn't even need tools.'
Regarding that worthless display, Yul Hwi slid his gaze toward the examiner, who had been silently observing the two from one side.
"Am I allowed to kill him?"
"...!"
"I'll take that as a no. What about crippling him?"
"You barbarian bastard! I'll hack those lanky legs off and slam you to the ground!"
"......Begin!"
The examiner, who ultimately gave no answer and merely declared the start before retreating to a safe distance.
Quietly noting that tacit complicity of a response, Yul Hwi then calmly met the killing intent of his opponent, who came slashing at him with savage ferocity.
"Barbarian!"
His towering height, his striking jade-green eyes.
Add to that his objectively exceptional features and the distinctive weight of his bearing—was it all too much?
His opponent, Seomun Yeol, could do nothing but repeat the word "barbarian" as he poured out one violent sword stroke after another.
"Th-! A barbarian scum like you...!"
"......"
SHING—!
SWISH! SWOOSH!
Yet despite the fierce onslaught of sword forms that would have done proud anywhere in the martial world, the blue steel sword in his grip could not so much as graze Yul Hwi's clothes.
And that was despite the fact that Yul Hwi had barely moved from his original position.
"Did a barbarian slap you around as a child?"
"?!"
"I ask because you keep calling for one. I have never met any of them myself, you know."
"You son of a—!"
'Being this tall really is convenient.'
It was remarkably easy to look down on his opponent from above, and all he had to do was twitch the corner of his mouth to complete the provocation on the spot.
With a frame heaven-sent for playing the arrogant greenhorn drunk on his own talent, one could hardly ask for a more perfect physique.
Take the wretch before him—his pride was already thoroughly wounded from the mere fact of having to look up at Yul Hwi the entire time.
"I'll kill you!"
FLASH—!
"Oh?"
And so Seomun Yeol had resorted to unleashing sword qi.
'He's not far behind the Blossom Sword Dragon of Mount Hua I killed before.'
Granted, Blossom Sword Dragon Myeong-u had met an ignominious end, ambushed in a Pleasure House while indulging in a secret rendezvous.
But the Blossom Sword Dragon whom Mount Hua had once boasted of to the world was undeniably a talent of rare caliber, with few peers in his generation.
And yet Baek Seol—whom he had been spending the past few days with—along with this Seomun Yeol showed an aura in no way inferior to that of the Blossom Sword Dragon.
Considering that they had not even formally entered one of the two veins to receive elemental martial arts training—operating solely on foundational arts—it was a truly staggering state of affairs.
'At this level, they're a cut above Mudang or the Namgung Family. Perhaps even above Shaolin, the den of demons that it is among the orthodox sects.'
The more he saw of the Sun and Moon Gate, the more astonishing it proved.
Enough to make his desire to get his hands on it and exploit it to the fullest grow stronger with every passing day.
"Stop dodging and fight me properly!"
"Hm."
Of course, from the perspective of Seomun Yeol—who saw all of this inner analysis as nothing but a vicious campaign of disrespect and contempt—his blood pressure merely continued to soar.
On this cramped square arena, a mere three jang to a side—
The fact that Yul Hwi still stood virtually rooted in place, having moved no more than a few steps, and effortlessly evaded every sword qi strike he could muster was infuriating enough to make his blood boil.
'He has the Nine Yin Severed Meridians! He hasn't even received proper Yin-Cold Qi Arts instruction yet!'
From Seomun Yeol's standpoint, the situation was utterly incomprehensible.
Unlike himself, who had trained steadily in the Sun and Moon Gate's foundational arts since childhood in preparation for entry into the Sun Vein—
That barbarian from a ruined family had merely gotten lucky, saved by the Moon Vein's elders while running for his life.
And that only made him angrier.
'If I can just cripple him, I can become an elder's disciple too......!'
What had compelled him to forfeit a perfectly earned qualification at the last Vein Entry Trials?
Because a paltry third- or fourth-place finish would have left him as nothing more than a bottom-rung member of the martial force units.
He needed to reach at least the finals to catch the eye of the elders who came to observe.
Then, just yesterday, a covert commission had arrived—one that offered a shortcut to bypass all that tedious, grueling toil in a single stroke.
'If I just take care of you......!'
It was the task of destroying the Nine Yin Severed Meridians that the Moon Vein had gone to such lengths to acquire.
The condition was somewhat demanding—he was not to kill, but to cripple at least one of the target's four limbs—yet Seomun Yeol had felt not an ounce of worry.
Because the commission came with the additional intelligence that his opponent was the sole survivor of a ruined family, someone who had never properly learned a single martial technique.
On top of that, the bout's examiner had reportedly agreed to buy him enough time to finish the job.
With not a single cause for concern, everything had seemed perfectly set.
That was certainly how it had looked until just moments ago—
"You seem to have a lot on your mind."
"?!"
Yul Hwi's composed voice—still standing without having launched a single attack, merely swaying his upper body—began to drape a creeping dread over Seomun Yeol's mounting anxiety.
"Someone once told me this when I was young."
STEP.
FLINCH!
"Gh, ghhk!"
A single casual step forward, and Seomun Yeol flinched without meaning to—his face instantly flushing with humiliation.
But Yul Hwi paid it no mind, continuing to recite the words in his heart in the same flat, emotionless tone.
"Fear is born of ignorance toward the unknown."
"What the hell are you—!"
"I can see your clumsy sword forms as clearly as day, yet you know nothing about me. Is that not so?"
"...!"
Seomun Yeol, drenched in sweat and breathing slightly ragged before he realized it, could not bring himself to answer.
The reason was simple.
'Why, why is this happening?! Why am I suddenly—!'
The eyes that had suddenly shifted, regarding him as one might regard a pebble on the side of the road—those utterly indifferent pupils had become chains of uncontrollable dread, binding his entire body tight.
That this was an ultra-high-level technique wielded through killing intent alone—a feat achievable only by an assassin who had reached the loftiest heights of the killing arts—was a hidden truth the current Seomun Yeol could not have begun to fathom.
"The base desire you failed to hide until the end. And the way you kept targeting vital points and critical meridians—places designed to inflict permanent damage. Seeing that, I have made my decision. Your sentence."
"W-wai—!"
At some point, his sword qi had vanished without a trace, and not an ounce of strength remained in his body.
In the midst of that unimaginable crisis, just as Seomun Yeol scrambled to stammer something—something struck, darting in like a bolt of lightning, and sliced cleanly across the center of his throat.
SPURT—!
"Gk, gkrrk!"
Desperately clutching his neck with his left hand against the sudden, agonizing pain, he could not stem the tide of blood that gushed out in reverse.
"You will have no trouble eating or drinking. It is simply that you will never bark so loudly again."
"Gkah! Gkurk! Kkhk! Gkrrk!"
CLANG!
He even dropped his sword to the ground, seizing his throat with both hands and squeezing with all his might, but—
"Gkrrk! Gkaaah......"
The storm of shock, terror, and dizziness from excessive blood loss that belatedly crashed over him completely paralyzed Seomun Yeol's reason.
"St-stop! Stop—!"
The examiner rushed in between the two, pressing down on Seomun Yeol as he writhed and thrashed on the ground, then glared savagely at Yul Hwi, who stood idly flicking scraps of flesh from beneath his fingernails.
"......You had overwhelming ability. Did you truly have to go this far?"
"Hm? I am afraid I do not follow."
"What?"
"Was it not you, examiner, who stood by in silence the entire time that wretch was aiming his sword qi at the tendons, meridians, and spine of my four limbs?"
"Th-that was...!"
"Between having the tendons and meridians of all four limbs severed and the spine shattered—surely a single damaged vocal cord is the better outcome, would you not agree?"
"You...!"
After sneering coldly with a voice dripping with mockery,
Yul Hwi turned on his heel and began walking toward the arena's steps—then drove a frigid warning deep into the examiner's ears.
[I do not know what you were promised in return, but at best, all that awaits you is the fate of the hound boiled once the hare is caught. In the end, I will claim a seat so far above you that you would not dare so much as glance at it.]
"?!"
[If you pull this kind of favoritism again, every person connected to you will die.]
"You...!"
[And you will survive to the very end. You will watch every last one of those deaths with your own eyes, then live on—neither able to die nor truly live—until you have endured every moment of the natural lifespan heaven has allotted you.]
"!!!"
At the top of the stairs leading down from the arena.
There, Yul Hwi spun around and plastered that arrogant smile across his face once more.
Staring straight into the eyes of the examiner—now frozen solid like a block of ice—while Seomun Yeol trembled and convulsed in the man's grip.
The faint heat emanating from the examiner's body was something Yul Hwi dismissed with a casual tilt of his chin, as if it were beneath contempt.
A gaze that urged without urging.
"The... Taewon...... Yul Hwi of the Taewon Yul Family is the victor."
"But of course."
Only after that small declaration of victory was wrung from the examiner's lips—unable to meet that gaze head-on—did Yul Hwi finally descend the steps with light, unhurried strides.
The Sun and Moon Gate's Vein Entry Trials, commencing at this year's summer solstice, thus raised its curtain amid the tremendous upset of its very first bout.